It’s happening all over. 2019 initiatives are dying. If this is happening to you, you aren’t alone. Can you save one or more of yours?

We often ask people to accept that change is good. In practice it works more like:

- Change is good when I suggest it,

- Change is bad when someone suggests it for me.

Take this as Peter’s change axiom. If everyone felt as good about change as you might, this would be easy. But if everyone was a good at this as you, well they would all have your job wouldn’t they?

How key people on your team view change can be the rock on which you build this year. Or it can be the rock on which new initiatives crash and sink.

Crash: The Assumption of Limited

People might offer a whole list of excuses of why a new idea can’t work. People don’t usually say that they can’t do something because it was Not Invented Here (NIH.) What’s the reason beneath those excuses? Usually a sense of being limited.

This is not something to be vilified. Almost all of us get some early training in the assumption that we are limited. Many of us keep that sense of ourselves into our work years. It impedes personal growth, and it also impedes business growth.

When you get resistance to your 2019 program, it might be because the idea actually sucks. It might also be because people feel limited and vulnerable to change that they did not sponsor. They don’t feel ownership. To you it feels a lot like Not Invented Here.

Building: The Assumption of Growth

Growing revenue, people, and time all work from a different assumption: That growth is not only possible, it’s our natural state. Peter’s second axiom is that people love progress when they are the ones making it happen.

One of the underlying theses of my postings and articles is that the people who successfully grow businesses live and express an assumption of growth. It is a very common denominator of leaders in growth businesses.

Here’s a story that shows how this starts.

Julie builds a house out of blocks in her pre-kindergarten play time. She does this happily, with a sense of the power of making. Andy comes over, still not fully sure on his feet, and knocks the house down. He’s feeling and showing the power to stop something.

The next day Julie builds it again. Andy cheerfully knocks it back into individual blocks.

This same pattern continues for days. Andy’s parents say that boys will be boys. Julie’s parents congratulate her on her art. Each day Julie and Andy get the pleasure of expressing their power.

This happens at all ages, doesn’t it? Andy’s role in this is easy. No creativity is required and he gets to express his power. Does this resonate with your own corporate experience? It feels like Not Invented Here.

Julie takes a different role. For companies that should grow, this is a great example. Many initiatives fall apart at least once on the way to success. What keeps them going is the expression of the sense of growth. If you will, an attitude of Not Invented Yet.

Eventually, Julie stops Andy. How can she do that as an adult in your business? Perhaps the best answer is to help Andy build his own house with blocks. What if she is tempted to bring it down with a well placed blow? Best to not do that. If Andy gets a taste for construction as well as destructing he may become an ally.

Does that mean that Andy has to entirely change? No, like all of us Andy has both limit and growth assumptions in his sense of self. It is a choice that he, and only he, can make. Julie just wants to help him choose growth this time. As a colleague her work is to help Andy try growth.

Improving the Chances of Change’s Success

Daryl Conner and I wrote an article summarizing some of the best real world strategies for change: Lessons From the Real World of Major Business Initiatives (http://www.meyergrp.com/index.php/articles/growing-your-executive-team-s-future/62-lessons-from-the-real-world-of-major-business-initiatives) The strategies are important. The underlying assumption is just as critical.

What if you assume that every person on whom you rely has a mix of a sense of limitation and a sense of growth? If they have both, you can treat them as Julie might treat Andy.

What does that mean? If you sense a Not Invented Here response, you can:

- Help others to see how they have grown, and connect to that feeling of growth.

- Help others sense that they can manage this, that it is within their current limits.

This is not about what they might build. This is about whether they feel that they can build it. You and Julie are supporting a sense of ability, not an outcome.

One other alternative? You can stop your initiative. Sometimes that is the exact right choice. You always have to allow for the possibility that your idea sucks.

A_ Not Invented Yet Team

There are myriad techniques to bring a team together to work to be Not Invented Yet team individuals. (Again, check out the Conner/Meyer article noted above.) All work from one assumption, that we are not vulnerable to what we invent. The best way to help others start there may be when we demonstrate exactly that. For all projects, large and small, we can improve our growth by assuming that it is natural and acting that way.

Einstein said that “Failure is success in progress.” The message isn’t to fail again. It is to assume that progress is the natural state. To assume that we are not automatically limited. That is an assumption that we can only make for ourselves as individuals. The good news is that each of us has gotten here, we have lived that assumption for at least a little while. If you want a Not Invented Yet team, help each member get in touch with that.

]]>iworldclassdesign@gmail.com (Peter Meyer)BlogThu, 14 Feb 2019 02:59:55 +0000Do You Own the Problem or the Solution?http://meyergrp.com/index.php/blog/item/35-do-you-own-the-problem-or-the-solution
http://meyergrp.com/index.php/blog/item/35-do-you-own-the-problem-or-the-solution

Walt was clear: He felt that missing his targets someone else’ fault. As his boss, Ellen didn’t care. She wanted him to set aside blame and accept that he owned the problem.

Ellen’s question for me was: “Is that the right position to take with Walt?” I’m thinking: “We can do better.” Let’s look at this.

There are three positions I can take when there is a problem:

1 - I can blame someone else,

2 - I can own the problem, or

3 - I can own the solution.

For me, I don’t want to blame someone else. Sustainable success starts with owning the solution.

Who Should Own the Solution?

Clearly someone has to own the solution. In many organizations, that would be Ellen covering for Walt. That works but it impedes growth for your business. It also impedes growth for Walt.

Ellen wants strong people on her team, so she wants Walt to work from a place of strength. That means internally driven. That in turn means Walt owning the solution.

The difference between owning the problem and owning the solution? It is the difference between treading water and growing. The good news is that we can make the choice to own the problem every day. We can share that with our team. Bypassing blame is obvious. And moving past owning the problem to owning the solution is a way to help grow your team and your business.

Can you use price as both a cost based calculation and a tool to define your market? Do you need to discount to get a deal? Let’s step back and think about how to use price as a tool to define and then create a new market.

This is not about market disruption (for more on that, please see http://www.meyergrp.com/index.php/articles/growing-your-revenue/86-building-a-disruptive-business). This is about market creation. Sometimes the best way to compete is not to compete. Instead it is to create a new space, one where you are the only supplier and your customers are very focused on getting a solution that only you offer.

Your price is always part of positioning your product. Sometimes you want the sense of value to be high, where you get the image and get increased margin. The question is: Can you get both of those without losing sales?

Yes, you can raise prices and still gain sales. The key is to solve the right problem.

The answer is: Yes, you can raise prices and still gain sales. The key is to solve the right problem. The good news is that the right problem to solve is not your price.

Choosing the right problem sets up your success in twists and turns in business. You set yourself up to choose the right view and then hold that line. It is like driving into turns when you cannot know where the turn comes out. If you want to succeed, you can either slow down (and how likely is that in this market?) or you can set yourself up for success before you enter the chicanery. How you set up the turn defines how well you can come into and out of the unknown.

Pricing Internal and External Views

Fundamentally you have two price views to consider -- one internal, the other external. In the internal view of pricing, you price to cover fixed and variable costs with a bit of profit. This process is internally focused, defined by the needs of your business and your strategies.

In the external view, your price is a tool to define your market and position yourself around your competitors (if you have any.) When you price in one range, you may find that you will compete in the existing market. However, if you set your price at a significantly higher or lower level you may create a market where none existed before. As paradoxical as it may seem, pricing higher may increase your volumes and your margins.

Looking internally when you decide to compete in an existing market you may need operational excellence to keep costs low and margins acceptable. For example, if you choose to enter the market for over-the-counter painkillers, your ability to stay within a certain price range is important. The good news is that you know the price point before you start. The downside is that so does everyone else and this usually leads to thin margins.

If you choose to sell into a space where there is little competition, margins may be easier to maintain. If you choose to sell into a space where there is no competition, then your price and margin can be set by how important your solution is to a customer. In other words, you get rewarded for the quality of your solution even more than the quantity of your operational excellence.

When you choose the right external problem, you don’t need to be excellent to get rewarded with high margins.

Put more starkly, when you choose the right external problem, you don’t need to be excellent to get rewarded with high margins. You can still get growth by sloppily solving the right problem. In the external pricing view, you price according to the value of your solution as the customer sees it. And how the customer sees that is going to be dependent on her view of the problem instead of how you might wish she sees another problem

The Problem Isn’t Yours

In the internal view, all the problems are yours. If things go well, your customers will buy according to how well you help them sense the problem. Your price should reflect the intersection of where you make money and customers still buy.

In the external view, you find the right problem. What is right? The critical problem that your customer will pay to solve. The problem isn’t yours, it is theirs. And if they feel that it is a highly pressing problem they will pay extra to solve it. Your job is not to make it seem urgent, it is to uncover what is truly urgent.

We all have more than one problem on our desk. If I turn to you and offer to fix problems 11, 12, and 13, you may pay attention. If I offer to fix just one problem, but it is one of your top three, you may pay much more attention. And you will probably be willing to pay more to have it fixed.

When the problem is the customer’s and it’s truly pressing they will invest to solve it.

To be clear, the payment for fixing a top problem isn’t just about money. If the problem seems very real to the customer, they will pay in time and people as well as money. The key is that when the problem is the customer’s and that it’s truly pressing they will invest to solve it. That is when you want to be right there with a good solution

What problems tend to be truly pressing? When my firm asks they are problems about time (as in time to market or time to production) or people (as in “I need to clone my best people.”) The third level problem is cost. Cost is always in last place.

However every customer says that they want to save money. As you know they do not act that way. Most of us invest in gaining competitive advantage. Time and people are key to that.

Inside the Curve

When you drive well you set your turn up before a curve. The right starting line for a turn makes a faster and safer turn. The same is true here. How you set up your pricing around a strongly held problem defines how you will enter and exit a difficult and perhaps invisible turn in business.

What is the best set up for the turn? The one that gets you closest to the problem as the customer sees it.

How does this affect your price? You don’t enter the turn (set your price) until you know that your customer agrees on a value on the solution. If the problem feels very real to the customer, she will invest time and people for this.

If the problem is one of the top few for your customer she will assign a value that is much higher than if it is number 10. Your assignment is to price to that value.

Then drive your solution to match her sense of value. The worst case is that you will have to bleed some speed (price) because of an issue that you didn’t expect. The most likely case is a smooth turn and a strong exit to set up the next turn. And more sales at high margin.

If you set your price based on internal costs and spreadsheets, it is like entering the turn while looking at spreadsheets on your phone. You know what is going on in your own world but you do not know what is going on in the turn.

If you set your prices based on the customer’s sense of value of their most important problems you will be using external views. This does not guarantee your success, but it certainly improves the likelihood of exiting that turn at full speed with a smile on your face.

Driving the Price

What drives the price that you will charge? How well you understand a key customer problem, and then how well you set up your solution. If you do both well before you enter the turn you will give yourself a chance to command a price that feels fair to your customer and that rewards you. And you can keep up your speed and your success.

You manage people and events. Does that make you an example? Can you be an example of responsibility and practicality at the same time?

I have a real case for you -- Joe the CEO of a Midwestern services firm. Talking to his employees, Joe emphasized the value of integrity in the workplace. He was very careful to make it clear that it was everyone’s responsibility to do what it takes to win and to always do it ethically. Joe evangelized values frequently and publicly. He bought supportive books for his employees, his key suppliers, and his customers.

At the same time Joe’s Vice President of Sales presented several candidates to fill a senior sales role. One prospect had a wonderful pedigree, great previous results, and a position with one of Joe’s key rivals. That candidate also offered also to bring the competitor’s current internal database of customers.

The decision was clear: Take a great candidate and get the forbidden list or to walk the talk. This was a chance to weigh responsibility against practicality. The “talk” that Joe had been giving would bring him to say no. The temptation to get a great sales person and a treasure of great data would bring him to say yes.

Joe hired the candidate. Within days, Joe’s employees all knew. His image inside his own firm was significantly tarnished.

The Meyer Group has done studies, and you have read others. They tell us what we intuit, most people prefer to do what is right and they want the same from others. They shun acquaintances (and bosses) who do and feel less than good. They avoid purchasing from businesses that fail that very personal standard.

It goes further. The best people tend to leave companies that feel less than responsible. Sometimes they check out emotionally, sometimes they quit and go elsewhere. No business can grow and excel when that happens. Keeping good people engaged is part of your job. What you do becomes part of that equation.

The eyes are on you. But what gives you the right to set standards of responsibility? Who made you a deity? And what do you do about it?

Control vs. Govern

Most successful executives value independent thought and action. Very few successful managers want to be controlled. Very few of us really want to control the thoughts and actions of others. So what do you do? Instead of control, what about governing? Setting the right example is part of that.

Try these three steps:

Step 1 - Inspect Visibly

This is not about transparency, this is about acting. Start with visibly inspecting what you consider to be important. When you look at periodic updates from your team, do you request and measure ethical activity? The CEOs who succeed here make it a point to systematically ask how their team members are applying the company’s principles. One or two hits on this each month take little time but are wonderfully visible. This is good governance.

Step 2 - Do

Here is where transparency matters. You can talk about corporate citizenship, you can give money, but your strongest statement will be when you visibly do something like take a half day and volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. Another option: Many local schools use business people to guest teach once a fortnight. The point is to do something visibly, and to do something that any employee could emulate.

Step 3 - Encourage

When you see people in your team making good choices for your business, thank them personally and immediately. A note on your stationary will do more than a company program or an award. Nothing speaks louder, and the successful CEOs don’t delegate this.

When you act visibly on responsibility, the community and business both benefit. So do you, you get to keep your job as part time deity and full time executive.

Can giving grace be a way to help grow your own time and your people? Yes. Here’s an example for you.

Let's start with the problem. When Paula took a new middle management assignment she found that it included an employee who hadn't been performing for a long time. The employee reported to Bethanne who now reported to Paula. Before Paula got the assignment, Bethanne had been told not to do anything to penalize or remove this employee because "We’re all family. We help the weak ones."

"We’re all family. We help the weak ones."

Sometimes we make the kindly decision to support one person’s weakness over the needs of the organization. Often, we don’t like it but just accept this and let the situation continue. It leads to dysfunction. It saps your time and the respect of people on whom you rely. In an organization with extra resources, this might be acceptable. However, how many of us have extra resources these days?

So how did Paula both generate growth and support people who needed help? This solution for growth comes from:— Starting from the right place— Engaging with people but releasing the work— Giving grace

1. Starting From the Right Place

You already know that one of the fastest ways to engender resentment in employees is to try to please everyone. It is tempting to want to help people feel better and to do that we sometimes define ourselves by how others see us.

However, executives who succeed at sustainable growth don't define themselves from an external standard. Those who consistently make growth work are the ones who define themselves from what they know is right.

These successful executives lead from their own core values. Those are what drive their decisions. Often, not always, it drives the culture in that business. It is always key to successful growth.

Paula chose to start from what she knew in her core was the right way to act and not react. She chose to improve her organization even if it meant releasing the employee who wasn’t performing. Prioritizing performance might not seem common in her company, but it is core to her values. And acting instead of reacting is another key value for her. She chose to combine these into a plan to engage but not do Bethanne’s work.

2. Engaging But Not Doing

The choice to shelter either the employee or Bethanne didn’t feel right for Paula. Sheltering is often a reaction, and one based on fear. You stifle growth when you let fear guide your choices. We and our businesses don't grow from fear; we grow from stretching to fulfill our potential. We don't grow from protecting; we grow from expanding our current abilities.

We don’t grow from protecting. We grow when we act, not react.

That feels intuitively correct, but how do you manage people to grow them and your own access to time? Instead of hands off management, you can:

- Provide meaningful problems for them to solve - Engage with individuals as they solve these themselves - Get out of the way as they own the issue, make mistakes, and learn

Engaging with employees is not protecting them. Engaging starts with actively choosing the challenge they will face. It continues with actively guiding learning and growth. It is acting to stay available and present for the work but not doing the activities for your people. This is hard work.

Growth happens when you are present, engaged, and managing the growth but not the activity.

Paula wanted to give this employee a full chance to make things work. Bethanne "Did that, but after another 90 days we just knew that he could not do the work." Paula could have terminated the employee herself, and done it faster than delegating that task. However, she decided to structure this to become a doable learning experience for Bethanne.

"Having to deal with the bureaucracy and political burden of having to move somebody out of the business” was not new. Firing someone in a Fortune 100 company where poor performers do not get moved out of the business “that was the hard work. From me she got the encouragement. I told her that this is the right thing to do.” But telling her was not enough. “I provided the grace to do this."

3. Giving Grace to Get Growth

What does Paula mean by “providing grace?” This is how she explains it: “I recognized that this was going to be a demanding activity for Bethanne.” The employee could be valuable elsewhere in the company, so this move had to be executed excellently and with real sensitivity. For Bethanne to do this and to grow, she needed relief from some of her everyday urgencies. That is the “grace” that Paula wanted to give.

It feels like a luxury to give someone time to think this all through, to research the right answers, to work out the details. For Paula that meant a conscious decision to reduce her workload in an environment where workloads were increasing. Paula chose to make Bethanne's development a more important priority than any one project. She prioritized the organization’s growth ahead of both Bethanne’s normal workload and ahead of the employee’s comfort.

Paula looked at the best way to help Bethanne do this right and changed her workload for several months. "There were some assignments that I would have had go to her. I didn't."

Bethanne knew that Paula was involved and was investing in her. She also knew that Paula was not doing the work for her. Bethanne felt supported but also knew that she had full responsibility to get this issue right. Bethanne acted in the way that Paula hoped. “She responded to that by doing a complete job.”

This was was the reverse of normal delegation. In order to give Bethanne space to work this process, Paula had to take on more work for herself. Paula was was putting out more effort, not less.

However, there is self-interest here. “It is important to me as her manager; she becomes more valuable to me. It is important to Bethanne because important skills are expanded, it is important to the corporation because (we) have one more skilled manager.” No matter whether your team is small or large, having a skilled manager is going to be an advantage.

You don't assemble skills like this; you grow them. You owe it first to yourself and then to your business and team to grow good managers. “Giving grace” is part of nourishing growth and growing your business.

Fostering Growth for Your Organization

Do you choose to make growing people one of those important contributions to your business? Paula made that choice here. “Investing in (Bethanne) was the right thing to do. She was a good manager on the verge of becoming a great manager. What more important managerial job do I have? That is the top of the game for me.”

“What more important managerial job do I have? That is the top of the game for me."

Growth starts with working from your internal strength and values. The bad news is that you can't rely on anyone else to get it. The good news is that you don't need to rely on anyone else.

More good news: If you choose people well and let them learn, your team members don't need to rely on you. You can let them supply their own strength if you can give them the grace, sense of values, and engagement to do so. Doing this grows your own access to time.

People will make mistakes, but progress is a changeless law. If you hold to your core values, and ask them to do the same, you will foster growth. Giving grace is a way to turn a problem into growth for your organization. And growth for your time as well.

You want to succeed at negotiation, but is it strategic for your business growth? How can you make this an advantage inside as well as outside your company?

Many of us were trained to approach negotiation with spreadsheets and margins and then add game theory. It’s a start.

However, is your business just about numbers? Not a chance. Don't you use negotiation throughout your day, with people on whom you rely? Let’s look at a way to integrate all this to help foster growth.

Your Start

You may know Chris Voss’ book on negotiation (“Never Split the Difference”) as a discussion of very high stakes. He was a top hostage and terrorism negotiator for the FBI. Despite his personal aggressive style and the hard people and situations he faced, he suggests that you negotiate with “unconditional personal regard.”

If you sit down with someone and just assume that they are nothing but good, Voss holds that you will have an advantage in the negotiation.

This does not mean that you assume that they are right or that you should give an inch. You just assume that they are good. This works. It’s grounded in research.

“Unconditional personal regard” comes from work done by Carl Rogers back in the 50s, where he applied it to therapy. I’m not suggesting that good business negotiation is therapy. It’s an ongoing process to get agreements that work for you while you improve relationships that matter to you and your business.

Don't Split the Hostages

When you start with unconditional personal regard, two things happen. One is that you are relaxed and able to use that to build and hold a position. The other is that you telegraph your ease. That can help the other person trust you. And maybe trust themselves more.

The title of the book, “Never Split the Difference,” refers to how Voss succeeded. Using unconditional personal regard as a start, he never chose to say: “You have 4 hostages, I’ll take two and you keep two and we’ll split the difference.” He went for everything. He usually got it.

So what does that have to do with your results? It means that while you hold to your position, both you and your opposite feel comfortable that you are held in regard. You strengthen your relationship even as you get the results you came to get.

Unconditional Personal Regard

One of the keys to Rogers is that he let his patients feel that they were capable of doing their own work. Instead of the therapist fixing the problem, doctors who use this take the position that the patient inherently has the tools and just needs to be guided to use them.

In business, this would be like saying: “You have what it takes to make this happen, I’m comfortable that you can. Now go do it.” Isn’t that how you like to be managed?

This is not about negotiating transactions anymore. This is about how people feel about working with you. Do they feel like there is a constant need to defend themselves? To be on their toes just in case?

Or do they feel that they can work with you over time? Do they feel that while you may not support all their actions or results you will always hold them with unconditional personal regard?

If you start that way, you have a good chance of ending that way.

Voss uses unconditional personal regard when he negotiates. He usually gets everything. But for a growing business this is about more than negotiation. It is about making a business grow.

This is going to be an odd question, but could be a very useful one for you. If you try it, you’ll clearly differentiate yourself with customers. You may learn a lot about them and they about themselves.

At the same time, if you ask the people on whom you rely some will increase their respect for you. Some may think that you are crazy. Consider yourself warned.

Oh, many people you ask will want to know your answer, so you’d best have an answer for yourself. So the question is: Why did you wake up this morning?

Of course there are no wrong answers. When I have asked over the past week, the replies include “To urinate,” “Get going for a meeting,” “To sell” and “To find more ways to grow myself today.”

What Is In This For You?

Consider these three benefits you can gain:

1 - If you ask a potential candidate for a hire, you’ll probably get information that can make your decision easier. It’s a great interview question.

2 - If you want to get a customer to reflect (instead of just hammer you on price or product) this can be a great question. You may find it hard to ask. However this question helps you to move from a commodity image to a more thoughtful one.

3 - Some people will take this as an aha moment. They will start to change their day based on the answer. With luck, you will benefit as they do.

My Own Answer

Yes, I’ll answer this as well. Of course this varies day by day, but in the past few weeks my own answer has been consistent. I was surprised by what I discovered.

I expected the answer to be around gratitude for my own ability to write and work. I was wrong.

When I’m just plain honest with myself, the reason I woke up this past few weeks is to do more today than I did previously. It is sort of about pushing my envelope, growing into new areas. As soon as I ask, it is really obvious to me.

I’m happy with the answer but I am even happier with the idea that I was wrong before. I think that we all want to learn, especially about ourselves. And I did. Using this question can help generate learning. With it, you can be a positive influence.

Benefits to You

Any time that you help a key person, or a customer, or yourself learn more you are differentiating yourself and your business.

- In commodity markets, this helps you to differentiate your business.

- In high service markets, this help you to show why you should be the vendor of choice.

- And when you want to attract and retain great people, this might help them see you as the person with whom to work.

Give it a try, ask the next person to whom you talk: “Why did you get up this morning?” You may both learn a lot. You may change the ground rules for your year. You will probably get a grin.

- Does it help grow revenue, your access to time, and the people on whom you rely?

The answers to all three are ‘yes.’ As you start the year, let’s look at quick hit ways to make that work for you.

Do You Make Gratitude?

This is both obvious and not. You know people who are good at expressing gratitude, and you also know people who just don’t seem able to express it. It isn’t about what you do for her or him. It’s about how they choose to act, is it not?

And isn’t that true for you? Are you a person who looks for reasons to be grateful? It could be gratitude with customers, employees, suppliers or anyone else significant in your life. More important, it could be to you. You can choose to do this, you need not wait.

You are always the best place to start, and when you do you set an example that others can follow. Some will, and then you will benefit.

Is This the Right Time?

If you’ve not been known for expressing or promoting gratitude, the start to the year may be the exact right time to start. Whenever you change behavior, people assume that it is temporary and that perhaps it should not be trusted. If you do it at the times of highest pressure (for example, at the end of a sales period) many folks will just ignore it.

This week is the right week, when you may have been out of sight for a little while. You can come back and say “I have been reflecting. I plan to practice gratitude a lot more this year, starting now.” Then you can start. Until you display it, nobody will believe it. And why they should they?

Does it Help Grow Revenue? Time? People?

Each of the key people in your business life has a choice of where they focus their time, energy, and best effort. If you are the one who expresses gratitude, you can expect more of their best work. And you will have earned it.

Post holiday is a great time to think about and express gratitude. Not about for what you are grateful from the past year. This is the time to do it to create a new standard for yourself, and then for others to emulate. Your business, and daily life, will do better for it.

Today is the right day to start.

]]>iworldclassdesign@gmail.com (Peter Meyer)BlogTue, 02 Jan 2018 20:07:57 +0000Setting Up the New Year for Growthhttp://meyergrp.com/index.php/blog/item/27-setting-up-the-new-year-for-growth
http://meyergrp.com/index.php/blog/item/27-setting-up-the-new-year-for-growth

New Growth for the New Year

This is also in response to a request: Do you have a good process for setting up the new year for growth? Not just to do the same we’ve done already, but to grow?

I’m going to reply with something simple but not easy. It looks a lot like a formula, and I guess it is. If you get the people on whom you rely to focus here it will help you to grow into the future instead of just repeat the past. If you go with this, you can increase revenue and get more things done in early 2018.

The Formula

First, what is the formula? My answer:

1 - Try new stuff

2 - Pay attention

3 - Repeat.

It looks simple. It is simple. And it works.

Why Three Steps

When we actually try new stuff and review it we are exploring and learning, moving into the unknown. We automatically improve. The key is getting started.

One of my axioms is that all of us enjoy growing and learning. It is true for all of us.

Why Three Steps?

Have you ever seen projects that get launched and then abandoned? It happens all the time. Projects and programs get chartered, launched, and then ignored. Not much learning or productivity comes from that. So doing something new should be followed with “Pay attention” to what happened.

Ask the people on whom you rely to examine what happens. This is your chance to gain as they learn and improve.

What Will Everyone Learn? Will it Be Enough?

We never know what we might learn. It is a step into the unknown. Many will avoid it, deflecting the risk.

However, most of us will be willing to try to define the unknown if the chance of failure seems less than the joy of exploration. If we knew what we were about to learn it would not be new, would it? If you want to start the year with a sense of growing, that means moving into the unknown. Getting folks to accept that is not always easy.

A key is not to request large jumps. Take small steps instead. Promote the sense that any small growth is a good step. You can help people to enjoy the taste of success. Instead of asking your team to think large, ask them to try new things that they can do with comfort. Reduce the risk and stress of experiments, go for incremental success into the new instead of single big steps.

Pay Attention

Be obvious about looking at what happened.

The most common next step after a new idea is to ignore what happened and start something else. The second most common in many organizations is to look for what went wrong.

Instead of a “why did we fail” meeting to review an effort ask yourself, and the people upon whom your rely, to look at what they learned and can use again. Pay attention to what worked and how. Use that to focus on the transferable skills that you want to encourage.

Repeat

You may learn, but you can be sure that there is more. So the third step is to repeat the first two. If you are taking small steps, and getting satisfaction, this is easy. More important, if people are enjoying the learning, this is easy to promote. When you get it rolling, it can be difficult to stop. That is a good thing.

Make It Happen

As you prepare yourself, your team, your customers for 2018, ask yourself how you want them to see you. Do you want them to see you as you were in 2017? Or as progressive and growing and helping them grow in 2018?

As you lay out the start to your year, don’t just talk about what you did and what they can do to extend it. Ask them how you can help them do new things. Then ask them to take small steps, try new things, pay attention, and then repeat.

And you should do the same. You will get more grins per week, and why not do that in 2018?

This is in response to a request: "Have you got a strategy to encourage the last bits of revenue from the calendar year?" So let's consider something you can do this week. Let me start with three thoughts.

First: Most of my clients and business friends are looking to get as much revenue as possible in the next few weeks. If that is you, keep reading.

Second: The traditional path is to discount deals and add pressure to the sales team and customer. This works some of the time, but you know that there are deals where it won't work. Everyone knows the game, and your customers are often resistant to it. They think of end of year revenue as our problem, not theirs. And they are usually right aren't they? So we try to buy or pressure their help.

Third: Most people, under pressure, return to old habits. The more pressure we apply, the more they work from history. In other words, under pressure most people hunker down to what they used to do.

Is that what you want?

If pressure and discounts are not working, consider reversing the pressure. Two options for you:

1 - Go to the prospect and say that you are done trying to pressure him/her. Ask what they would want that would add value instead. If you have a $500K proposal on the table, instead of discounting another $25K, ask what service you could provide that is not in the proposal that would help them this year or next. If you can do it for less than $25K, just make it part of the deal. They get something they didn't expect, you get to hold your price at $500K.

The point is not that you are giving them a discount in another way. The point is that you are letting them define value as they see it and you are delivering it. You are releasing pressure and changing the conversation. When the customer relaxes, she or he can see other solutions. You gain as well.

2 - Back off the pressure, start talking about 2018 plans and goals. Ask what she or he wants to get done next year, and just let them talk about that. You'll learn about what your future deals can be. Just as likely, if they are budget constrained (pressure from their own organization instead of you) then see if you can help them do some of that in this year's budget. You become part of the solution to their problem. You might wind up modifying your offer to be part what you had in mind and part what they had in mind, but still book a deal this year.

The point is not that you are backing off. The point is that you are engaging them to help them get something done that matters to them. You are releasing pressure and changing the conversation.When the customer relaxes, she or he can see other solutions. You gain as well.

It may be hard in December, but take a breath. Help your customer take a breath. Let both of you move from hunker down to a two way conversation. You might just book some good 2017 business as you do.

By the way, if you are asking where I have been, thank you. I spent a large part of the past few months intensely experiencing our health care system. I'm fine, getting stronger, and working again. And now I'm blogging again as well. My mind is going full speed, spin me some questions and requests!

This is a book and blog about growing your revenue, your time, and helping your people grow as well. Since we are talking about business, we’re going to start with revenue. In the end, it will be the tail that wags the dog, but revenue tends to get the most attention.

You have probably told someone that money doesn’t grow on trees. You have to make it happen. And if this someone was a teenager, you probably said that it was through hard work.

But there is more, isn’t there? People who work incredibly hard have businesses that crater. Some people who work smart have operations that excel, but even more have businesses that putter along and don’t excel. People who are connected succeed, but just as many people who are connected fail.

What is the difference between failure and growth? To illustrate, I’m drawing a 2x2 grid or Johari Window. The vertical axis goes from the assumption of "limits" at the bottom to the premise of "growth" at the top. (You can read more about this in Dr. Carol Dweck’s book: Mindset.) On the left side of the horizontal axis you will see "take" and on the right "make." (The photographer Ansel Adams discusses this in: "Ansel Adams: An Autobiography.") How does this 2x2 model work in business? Let’s explore that.

First, this is not fixed. Looking at the vertical axis, you see an assumption that scales from "we are limited" to "we are going to continue growing even further." Each of us is somewhere on this scale in every moment. At the same time, each of us makes an assumption of "take" versus "make" and that’s reflected on the horizontal access. We don’t live in one pane. We move from pane to pane as we learn and explore.

This book and blog are going to start with exploring good practices for growing revenue. But revenue is just the side effect. We’ll look at how to use the same window to help your people grow and then help you to grow more access to your time. In other words, you can use this as a tool to help you build your whole business.

And it starts with a core premise: We choose where we want to be in the window.

Limits or Growth? We approach every moment with mindsets, our views of how we operate. One of those is just how limited we are. This is the feeling that we’ve topped out. Maybe we feel that we can only go so far, and then we’ll be done succeeding. Perhaps we feel that there is no limit, that we can grow indefinitely. The lower left of this window is assuming that we will have a limit. The upper left is feeling that we can grow further than we used to think possible. We don’t live at either end, we are always moving somewhere higher or lower on the scale.

Dr. Dweck and some associates have written extensively about how this works for students. Dweck refers to "fixed mindset" and "growth mindset." â€¢ "In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. â€¢ "In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it." [Dweck, C. S.; Leggett, E. L. (1988). "A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality". Psychological Review 95 (2): 256—273. DOI:10.1037/0033-295X.95.2.256.]

Some people like to reach a place of excellence and then stop, thinking that this is the end of their ability. Some can’t stand that idea. They insist that there is nothing but upside opportunity. Success for the upper end of this axis is not reaching targets, it is continuing to grow past them.

How we define success when we start projects is important. If success is to aim for a specific target, you can get and then stop there. Your target becomes a limit on growth. Saying that we want to grow past a milestone isn’t placing a limit.

To be clear, when we define success as meeting a targets we are staying low on the vertical axis. When we define success as continual growth we are higher on the vertical axis. Yes, we meet targets along the way, and that is a byproduct.

Most of the people you work with will be somewhere along the spectrum. At first, you might think that this is binary: either you work from a fixed and limited mindset or you work from a growth mindset. In practice, all of us move up and down the vertical axis each day with each challenge.

Take or Make? In his photography, Ansel Adams set many standards. Lets focus on one key assumption from which he worked: "You don't take a photograph, you make it."

When you pick up a camera, you have two choices. One is to look at what you have been given. The other is to look at what you want to do with it. Do you ask your team to approach a project based on what they are given? Or do you ask them to look at what they can make with whatever resources are reasonable?

You initiate from one of two starting points. You can look for what is available. The other is to try to make an image that you want. Along with many other great photographers, Adams strived to make, not take.

It is easy to say that we have a limited set of resources from which to generate success. The same is true of Adams standing on a promontory. He had only one camera, and a few plates on which he could make images. He had a limited view in front of him. Still, he took the position that he built his photograph to match his vision, and that he’d make an image and not just take one.

Adams made photographs by working from his inner vision, and assembling the resources in a way that worked well for him. He made images work by starting from his inner strength. It is something he had, that we all have.

This is also not binary. There also are many times when Adams says that he got the image he wanted by what he called an act of God. In the "make" vs "take" spectrum, you don’t need to get to 100% make. Just moving past 50% will put you in a rarified atmosphere. The people around you have enough ability. The question is whether you can help them choose to make something more with their ability. Do they sleepwalk through the work? Do they follow the traditional paths with enthusiasm? Do they make new paths? These would appear as three different marks on the horizontal axis.

You can ask the question that grows revenue on this axis: - Are you taking what you are given from the outside or making what you will want from the inside? Consistent revenue growth comes when you help people see a way to take themselves further to the right.

Which of Four Positions Will You Be In Today?

In any given sales or development effort, you and the people around you might be feeling that you: - Have topped out and it is time to take what you have and pause (lower left pane). - Are at your best and you want to make more and more with what you have (lower right pane). - Have much more that you can take and use (upper left pane). - Have much more that you can do, and you can make revenue that was never forecast (upper right pane).

The more time you help people spend in the upper right, the faster your revenue grows. Just as important, the success there is self-reinforcing. If you can help your team taste the upper right more often, then they will want to live there. Then your task moves from pushing increased growth to managing increased growth. This is a better problem to have, no?

The more time you and the people around spend working from high growth and make assumptions, the more they will grow as people and you will grow your time. This is the cornerstone of growing your revenue, time, and people.

Getting you, your people, and your business to the upper right is what this book and blog are about.

This is in response to a request: “Have you got a strategy to encourage the last bits of revenue from the calendar year?” So let’s consider something you can do this week. Let me start with three thoughts.

First: Most of my clients and business friends are looking to get as much revenue as possible in the next few weeks. If that is you, keep reading.

Second: The traditional path is to discount deals and add pressure to the sales team and customer. This works some of the time, but you know that there are deals where it won’t work. Everyone knows the game, and your customers are often resistant to it. They think of end of year revenue as our problem, not theirs. And they are usually right aren’t they? So we try to buy or pressure their help.

Third: Most people, under pressure, return to old habits. The more pressure we apply, the more they work from history. In other words, under pressure most people hunker down to what they used to do.

Is that what you want?

If pressure and discounts are not working, consider reversing the pressure. Two options for you:

1 - Go to the prospect and say that you are done trying to pressure him/her. Ask what they would want that would add value instead. If you have a $500K proposal on the table, instead of discounting another $25K, ask what service you could provide that is not in the proposal that would help them this year or next. If you can do it for less than $25K, just make it part of the deal. They get something they didn’t expect, you get to hold your price at $500K.

The point is not that you are giving them a discount in another way. The point is that you are letting them define value as they see it and you are delivering it. You are releasing pressure and changing the conversation. When the customer relaxes, she or he can see other solutions. You gain as well.

2 - Back off the pressure, start talking about 2018 plans and goals. Ask what she or he wants to get done next year, and just let them talk about that. You’ll learn about what your future deals can be. Just as likely, if they are budget constrained (pressure from their own organization instead of you) then see if you can help them do some of that in this year’s budget. You become part of the solution to their problem. You might wind up modifying your offer to be part what you had in mind and part what they had in mind, but still book a deal this year.

The point is not that you are backing off. The point is that you are engaging them to help them get something done that matters to them. You are releasing pressure and changing the conversation.When the customer relaxes, she or he can see other solutions. You gain as well.

It may be hard in December, but take a breath. Help your customer take a breath. Let both of you move from hunker down to a two way conversation. You might just book some good 2017 business as you do.

By the way, if you are asking where I have been, thank you. I spent a large part of the past few months intensely experiencing our health care system. I’m fine, getting stronger, and working again. And now I’m blogging again as well. My mind is going full speed, spin me some questions and requests!

]]>iworldclassdesign@gmail.com (Peter Meyer)BlogWed, 27 Dec 2017 20:14:24 +0000How to Grow and Not to Be Ahead of Your Timehttp://meyergrp.com/index.php/blog/item/8-how-to-grow-and-not-to-be-ahead-of-your-time
http://meyergrp.com/index.php/blog/item/8-how-to-grow-and-not-to-be-ahead-of-your-time

Making the Unknown Safe for Your Customers and for You

By Peter Meyer, September 12, 2017

How often have you looked at a great business idea that failed and said: "They were ahead of their time." Or worse: "We were ahead of our time."

Was it luck or something that you can manage? Are you subject to the vagaries of the times or can you act to make your changes succeed? This article is about doing the latter. Instead of "We were ahead of our time" lets try a different quote, from Willam Gibson:

"The future is already here. It's just not widely distributed yet."

What does that mean? That you may already have the future in your current business plan. If so, the challenge is to find the right way to distribute it.

The good news? You understand the future view.

The bad news? Your customers and team members see it as the unknown.

The worse news? The more pressure that we, our customers, and team members feel, the more likely we are to avoid the unknown. It just seems too dangerous and time consuming. And what is increasing these days for both us and our customers? Pressure.

Is it any wonder that your customers and your own team tend to avoid the unknown? And doesn't that slow their growth. And your growth?

You know my axiom:

"Change is good when you do it to yourself. Change is bad when someone does it to you."

It does not have to be bad news. Consider this example of letting customers distribute their own future and then feel ownership for it.

Bringing the Unknown Into the Business Via Information Technology

If you want to grow successfully, you will eventually need to lead your customers into the unknown. You know that the landscape is littered with failed attempts to make change safe. Lets take one of the hardest examples in almost any enterprise. Which team often has the best sense of the future? The Information Technology (IT) team. Which team is most often stiff armed when it suggests the future? The same IT team. Whether it is right or wrong, it's clear that much of what a good IT team would distribute never gets to the team's customers.

For many general business executives IT is near the top of the list of unknowns to avoid. But who is the customer for most IT departments? These same general business leaders and their teams. Let's get even more difficult: Where might be the hardest place for IT to gain traction? Health care or academia, where the professional practitioners are highly independent of the administration.

So let's take this hardest case and use an example that works: Sutter Health, a large health care chain headquartered in Northern California.

"More than half my job is exposing the unknown and making it known." To do that, "We are making the unknown safe" comments Sutter's fairly new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is Wes Wright.

His team is thinking about more than ease of access to the new. They are also focused on helping the user feel rewarded by self-enablement. "The idea is to make it easier for our clinical and business partners to behave just like they are downloading Netflix on their iPad. . . When you load an application on your iPad there is a personal reward for it, it gratifies you in some shape of form. At work, that personal reward has to be clear, and has to be implemented at least a bit by the user. In IT we can't make the connection to your personal reward. Making that connection possible is about enabling people to take up self-service at work."

This is not just about ease, it is about the user feeling rewarded by self-enablement.

How Sutter Builds Customer Engagement With the Unknown

To build this, Wes' technology team follows a process where they go into the clinic and listen. And only then do they develop and offer enablement/empowerment tools. The practice is that the tools are designed from the lessons of working next to the clinical staff. The IT team then offers the advantages, and visibly make clear that they have listened and understand. "We do it *with* the clinicians, not *to* them."

Finally, the team is taking the potential rewards to the clinicians and allowing them to enable these by themselves. Wes uses the example of Netflix, but this is also similar to how the care team would develop and implement a new treatment plan.

"Historically health IT has sat back and said we need the requirements from the business. That's not the new health IT. The new health IT will be at the clinical and business partners' shoulder and since we know their work, figure out better and more rewarding ways."

"We don't sit here and wait for requirements anymore. Instead, we should be in the clinic with our clinical partners and know what their real requirements are." With that, the team develops and delivers. "Our goal is to make technology transparent to our clinical and business partners."

Another way of framing the way the IT team wants to work with the business and the doctors is to increase the clinicians' ability to treat IT like they treat medical technology. Or home technology. The principle is to look for ways to let them guide their own deployment of key information technologies.

Sutter's team makes the unknown safe by starting with their customer's work. If having to choose between technically elegant answers and ones with which the clinician can personally connect, the team only suggests change for the user when it can feel personally rewarding. It may mean giving up elegance for acceptance, this is a pretty reasonable trade.

Then instead of implementing the change to the user, the team makes it easy for each professional to self-enable. This step is key. It is how the users can make the unknown safe.

What Does That Mean For Leading Growth?

Back to Peter's rule of change: Change is good when you do it to yourself. Change is bad when someone does it to you. If you want to make the unknown safe, don't do it to your customers. Let them do it to themselves.

This requires a form of surgery for the team that thinks they know the answers: An arrogance-ectomy. No matter how well you think that you know your customers (even if you really do) it pays to approach them in a way that your team listens and learns. Once you have done that you have earned the right to make suggestions. No matter how well immersed you are in your craft, you don't have that right until you are caught listening.

What the Sutter technical team does works. They sit with their business users and observe instead of teach. With the results the team doesn't implement solutions. The strategy is to make it easy for the customer enable them. Like the Netflix example, if the customer intuitively feels a reward might come, she will be more likely to step into the unknown on her own. Then the change is good.

If Sutter Health's IT team can make the unknown safe, why not your product or sales team? Why not apply this to your next great idea? What have you got to lose besides a few cycles of failure?

Managing uncertainty has become more and more a part of any business. This article is about growing and that always deals with uncertainty, but these days just treading water feels uncertain.

So is there a good course to manage the ever changing paths? Yes. Can we learn something from the story of the planet Vulcan? And yes, I am serious.

This is not a discussion about facts. It's about understanding how to help people manage uncertainty. You may not have been thinking much about the planet Vulcan, but it has a history that can help us.

Finding the Planet Vulcan

You may think of Vulcan as the planet where Dr. Spock (from Star Trek) was born. Vulcan actually predates Star Trek. And it really applies to managing growth.

Let's start with Sir Isaac Newton, who developed what we think of as the law of gravity. After his death in 1727 astronomers spent over a century applying the gravitational attraction model to planets. Most results fit Newton's model but there was always one problem: The planet Mercury. There is a blip in Mercury's orbit for which Newton's math doesn't allow.

But the theory does work if you have a small planet between Mercury and the sun. That fits Newton's law, but as good scientists the astronomers wanted to lay eyes on the planet. It wasn't easy with the then current telescopes, but enough scientists found the planet that it was taken as fact in 1859. The argument was settled for most when prominent astronomers such as Le Verrier and James Watson declared that Vulcan had been seen. It was real.

Losing the Planet Vulcan

Somewhat later Albert Einstein started developing a general theory of relativity. It was a lot of work, the calculations took perhaps eight years to conduct. Then he wanted to test them. Looking for some examples, he chose Mercury's orbit. The math worked, and explained the blip in the path.

Now that was a problem. Vulcan's existence and Einstein's relativity model could not both be true. Most scientists accepted relativity. With that acceptance no-one could find Vulcan in telescopes. The planet ceased to exist as quickly as it had been found.

Managing Disappearing Planets in Your Business

In your business career, have you ever seen something that was considered an absolute certainty that was then rocked by a new theory that challenged it? If you have a smart phone near you, you've an example of certainty being challenged. Open the hood of your car, the same is true in engine design. Or maybe you won't even have a car in the near future, and isn't that the end of a certainty?

Does that mean that we should all start denying facts? Or that science is bad? Or that our business assumptions and norms don't matter? No, but it means that we have to assume that rock solid facts actually aren't.

The obvious question is: If we can't rely on what we may not know about technologies, customers, regulators, and the economy, well on what do we rely? I'm going to suggest a different question: "Is good management about what we know, or what we don't yet know?" I am going to say that good management is about what we don't yet know.

To succeed in growing a business, we have to assume that the planet we see may not really be there. Market disruption is all about removing things that have become obsolete. Land lines at home, distributor caps in your car, a volume knob on a television set were all certainties for what seemed a long time. You might have built business assumptions on those, and now have a failed business.

On what can you rely? Not on a planet or a distributor cap. You can't rely on any object or product. But you can rely on your own capability to grow and expand. Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford calls it "mindset" and has written an excellent book by that name. Look at it this way: - You can learn. - You can encourage the people on whom you rely to learn. - And you can encourage them to ask questions and listen. Those are the key to managing disappearing planets.

Finding the Next Planets

You always have the option to develop technologies. You always have the option to ask what the next serious problem will be. Go with the problem. The problem as the customer sees it will define the solution that stays, just as wider problems made Einstein's theory the right solution.

Solving a problem can open up new problems. Planets appear, then disappear. What is important? Your ability to ask the right questions to get to the next problem. Problems are good for growth. What we have seen over and over is that if you manage your team to find the right problem, and do it again and again, then the planets will align and your business will grow.

Do you have a role in your community? If you are a leader, what is your responsibility as a steward? For this short article: Yes you do; and it's not as complex as it might seem.

The Challenge: Knowing How to Read the Future

As leaders we're positioned to help define how the future unfolds. And as a good leader, people look to you for direction to move forward. I'm going to encourage you to embrace this. It is good for you and for your business no matter what your day job might be.

You may be reading this on a plane as a steward walks past you, but for this note lets choose a wider meaning of stewardship. To be a steward is to take care of something for now and for the future. We are, in this sense, all stewards for our teams, our customers, and our next generation. We want to take care of the economy and the environment in a way that we pass on something that is as good as or even better than we have now.

When I listen to managers, executives, and parents I often hear some variation of: "How can I possibly know what the next generation of customers or family or team members will need?" One of the side effects of increasing access to data is that you and I can't know. We can't tell people what to expect. Increasingly, if you think that you know the coming details, you're going to be wrong.

I've written before about how observing something changes it. Setting quantum physics aside for a moment, there's a practical application: The more you try to read into the future, the more difficult it gets to be even remotely correct. Good stewardship means releasing any urge to predict the details of the future. In daily life, good stewardship requires starting from a different place.

Data and Being a Steward

So what do I say to leaders who want to be good stewards? I have two answers for you. One is understanding yourself and the other is to choose to teach a principle, not data.

Why data? One of the keys to our ability to create new markets and to grow our businesses is the ability to find and generate data. The good news is that our ability to do this grows exponentially almost every month. The other side of that is that as the data increases, what we know about our environment doesn't follow suit.

We can use data, or get lost in it. However managing increasing flows of data is becoming more and more key to making markets that never existed before. When you do that right, you accelerate your business. When you do it less well, you get bogged down in bytes and your business falls behind. The data is not the solution.

The Approach: Lead the Acting, Not the Answers

This is going to be a pair of short answers. Not easy answers, but short.

Where do you start? I'm going to let Anthony Scriffignano answer this. "As leaders in organizations today the question is understanding why you do what you do as much as what you do. If the two are out of alignment, you should take that seriously and consider not only adjusting one or the other, but also what is causing the intention to vary from reality."1

Then, after this application of self-understanding, I would add: We're helping to change things. We're inducing uncertainty. Our role isn't to make things certain. Our key role is set principles and act from them, not to react better. The key certainty is that we can act as successful makers just as much as takers. You can and should be a great maker.

None of this is an easy prescription, but if it were easy, you wouldn't have this job would you?

Tomorrow we will change the world in which we live. However, we won't quickly understand the data and constructs that come from that change. When you accept your stewardship role your teams, customers, business and self all benefit when you align yourself first. With that, then set principles for action, not reaction, as the environment changes.

You are not adapting to the environment as that happens. You are changing it at the same time by knowing which principles should drive your action.

The best news: The certainty is not in the data, what is certain is your ability to set principles for action. And you can start that right here and now, in the aisle seat as the steward walks by.

You won't see much math in my writing, but you will find material on how to create and dominate new markets. Helping create those is what we do at the Meyer Group. A key principle for success starts with easy math.

The Equation:

When I lay out an equation, I am defining the same answer from two perspectives. For instance: 2 + 2 = 12 / 3 On the surface, the left half of this equation is addition, which is a positive and affirming perspective. I could argue that addition represents good and progress. I might assert that it demonstrates wealth.

The other half is division, which I can define as a negative or even as a slashing act. I could hold that slashing is microagression. I can say that this calculation demonstrates the worst tendencies in our communities. I can easily show myself that division is bad, a form of imposing poverty.

Stop Overthinking

You could make those assumptions and argue about the left vs. the right. Before you go there, ask yourself if you are focusing on: - Whether one way to get there is better, or - What you want done? If you are running a lean business in a commodity market, then you can gain by looking for small advantages in one approach to the problem as opposed to the However, if you are looking to create a market, these lines of reasoning delay your success. In new markets, delaying success often means that you are speeding towards an expensive learning opportunity. If you are reading this, you probably want to minimize that sort of thing. If the objective is a completely new market, then what matters most is that the equation works, not whether you add or divide to get there. One of the things that we wind up saying a lot is:

Don't overthink it.

As soon as you make the market, you will need a new equation anyway. You change your environment when you create a market. When you make that happen there is no need to optimize the old formula. The key is to practice making new markets, not analyzing the path. There is a simple formula for success for you here. In three steps: 1 - Try new stuff 2 - Pay attention! 3 - Repeat If you or your team is tempted to analyze the left vs. the right when you want to build something new, don't. Stop overthinking. It's time to try the three-step formula.

This article is designed to help you and your team to sell ideas and intangibles. You won't find any of the traditional sales advice. You don't need it here. If you manage an organization, do you sell something that is intangible? If you sell ideas to your own team or to your community, these two real examples are for you. Lets start with a difficult sales job, selling financial products, truly intangible merchandise. Many of my clients sell products and services to do this. If you do this discussion may resonate for you. If you don't sell financial products then please use this article to craft a better approach to help you and your firm sell intangibles and ideas.

And as a senior leader, you get to present and sell intangibles. Selling ideas is not just about the sales team, it's what we do to grow a business. We sell ideas every day to move our businesses to a better place for today and tomorrow. I'll focus on sales examples here, but this really is about how you can increase the acceptance of ideas in your business.

American Bank

Andrew took me to lunch to ask how he can do a better job selling to individuals and financial advisors. An executive for American Bank (these names are changed) he told me that he had a hard time getting client buy-in Marketing has provided a great set of tools for Andrew and his team. They're clear, comprehensive, and do a great job of protecting the bank while talking about what the bank could do. That may be what you want from a bank marketing team but it doesn't work for the sales team. The bank's story just is not compelling to enough clients. This is sort of like showing picture after picture of your grand kids to a stranger and hoping that you get a sale. No matter how excited you might feel, the other person politely turns you off. Andrew and the sales team are looking for ways to present the materials so that clients and advisors lean forward and listen. Average job tenure in this role at the bank is short. Most people fail at this task and leave. Andrew wants to succeed. Trying harder with that material doesn't seem to help him succeed.

Loring Ward

In some ways, Loring Ward (LW, and this is the firm's name) has a more difficult sale. Instead of working with a captured audience of advisors employed by their own firm, LW's customer set is independent financial advisors. While American Bank's target advisors are employed by the bank, the prospects on LW's list all work for themselves. Since they have access to a wider array of suppliers. LW has to earn the right to pitch products to these financial experts. Both sales teams face the same challenges. However, Loring Ward's sales people typically succeed. And the tenure at LW is considerably longer. Clearly, Loring Ward's positioning of ideas is different from American Bank's. The core value proposal does not change, but the way each company approaches clients results in a lot more success for LW. This is despite the fact that LW has a more difficult task.

String Theory Applied to Your Business

This version of String Theory is based on how to make better decisions in less time. The basic idea is simple enough - there are two ways to open a bag of seed or grain when it is sewn shut with a string. You can pull at the string from either end of the closure. One end of the string is difficult to yank and it gets more so as you jerk harder. More effort equals less success. However, pulling on the correct end is easy, one tug and you have what you want. The solution to get what you want is not to yank harder. The solution is to choose the right end of the string to pull. For both firms the string has two ends. One end is to insist on what and how the company wants to sell. The other end is to pull from the client what and how she wants to buy. In the first case, the Bank knows what it wants to present and asks it's team to lead with exactly that. On the other end of the string the client knows what he or she values and Loring Ward asks the client so that the sales person can lead with exactly that.

More Success

Sales people at American are discovering that when they work harder and harder with the bank's story, the whole experience gets knottier instead of easier. When the Loring Ward team approaches a client or advisor, they work from a different end of the string. The Bank's end of the string is to lead with what the bank offers. It is a complete offering, well crafted and well stated. However it is all about the bank and not really about the client or advisor. The client tends to think that the bank cares more about the institution than about the client. It is like those photos of a stranger's grandchild. Nice to see, but nothing that you want to buy. Loring Ward is training the sales team to ask questions instead of to present material. Rather than crafting a presentation the LW sales team starts by asking questions and by listening. The end of the string that LW pulls is quite intentionally the customer first end. To be clear, this is the firm's leadership team directing the sales team to start client conversations with "what do you value?" and "In a perfect world . . ." To pull on this end of the string, the best practice is to ask the client to talk about what matters irrespective of what the company has to offer. If you want to generate more success selling intangibles and ideas, consider how you can replicate Loring Ward's strategy.

Is There Just One End to the String?

Is there a single correct answer? No, both American and Loring Ward will have success. However, LW is having a lot more success per presentation. I have many clients who choose one or the other, and in general the ones who choose the listening first end of the string (truly consultative selling) are able to sell more intangible products at higher margins. It is honorable to try and overcome difficulty with sheer strength and determination. It pays the bills more quickly when you also have an alternative way to make things happen smoothly and easily.

Selling Ideas Inside and Outside Your Company

Which end of this string would you choose to sell your ideas? In a world of infinite time and no pressure you might feel comfortable pulling on the difficult end until you succeed. In a mindset of hubris and heroism, you might find gratification in applying more and more force on the tough end. In a place where you want to succeed and use that win to move on and grow, take the time to define and grab the other end of the string and pull there. To increase sales of intangible products, the difficult end might be what makes you feel good about your firm. The easy to pull end might be what helps your customer feel good. You have a choice. If you want to gain more buy-in in less time, choose the end of the string that LW chose. Then use your strength to grow your business from this new and higher level of shared understanding.

By the time that you read this, the polls will have closed, but the conversations are not yet ending. Perhaps this is a good time to go to a place of building and growing. Are there lessons that we can apply to growing our community and business? Lets look at this thing as a gigantic consumer marketing event. With that in mind, here are 6 important lessons that we can take and use for our own businesses:

1 - Check your data even after you have made your decision. Going onto autopilot on data may work, or it might not. We saw that campaigns used the wrong data in key places and didn't check it. They then made mistakes that could have been avoided. 2 - Don't define yourself by your competition. What did the major Presidential candidates do in the debates? How did their consumers react? To grow a business, or create a new market, define your business by what the customer will value not what the competition does. 3 - What got you to your current success may not get you to your next success. In any market your next customers may not be like your past ones. In growth, you can almost guarantee that your new customers will be different. Don't assume that you know what they want. Ask. 4 - Not all publicity is good publicity. This was a big AHA for me that I should have already recognized. Unless you get your approval rating higher than either of the main candidates, publicity can be a negative. The best practice is to work on building trust *before* publicity happens to you. Make trust part of your brand as a business. And as an individual. 5 - Be honest and approachable but not transparent with your customers. Make integrity and approachability a part of your brand and you will differentiate your business in a positive way. 6 - Don't put it in email unless you don't mind if everyone can see it. No matter what you think of the Presidential race, you can use lessons from it to build your business in a more positive way than this consumer contest was run.

Growing a business is not about winning one cycle. Growth is about defining a way to win in a systematic and repeatable way. We owe it to ourselves and our businesses to do that, to learn and move forward today. https://medium.com/@Peter_Meyer/taking-positive-lessons-from-the-election-7962115f6107#.ra9hcx7c9

Another practical example of string theory, a bit different but very relevant, comes from my friend Mort.

Mort is a serial CEO who, at retirement age, sold his most recent company. We had lunch last week so he could pose a really interesting question.

Mort had just been to see his doctor and then gone to a school reunion. The doctor suggested that his current good health is probably going to continue for another 30 years. His high school mates (including three doctors) had told him that at their age he should be happy to get two more healthy years. When lunch arrived Mort asked me how I'd approach this problem.

This is not my normal business topic. I've been writing about problem solving, figuring out how to address and resolve really difficult problems in our businesses. He reads my work, and wanted to discuss how to apply it here. I like and respect Mort, and I like and respect difficult problems. So we got into string theory.

The basic idea is simple enough - there are two answers to the question of how to open a bag of grain that is sewn shut. You can pull at the string from either end of the closure. One end of the string is difficult to move and it gets more so as you jerk harder. However, pulling on the correct end is easy, one tug and you have success. The solution to get what you want isn't to pull harder. The solution is to choose the right end of the string to pull.

We spent most of lunch looking at the different ends of the string for this problem. Trying to decide which doctors are right was the difficult end. The more Mort relied on the answers from Doctors, the more knotty it all got. The right end of the string turned out to be Mort choosing to look at how he felt about his own abilities. When he looks at his sense of himself, he feels capable and ready to act from that. This end of the string is tied to his internal, primary, reference. When Mort looks at his sense of himself, he feels capable and ready to act from that. He is confident in himself.

The right end of the string became this question:"If you were 18 years old, and had this 30 years question, what would you do?"

What made this work for Mort is that he put himself in two positions. One is that he is governor of himself. When he decides that he is able to craft his future, he works from his strengths. Those strengths have helped him create and run successful businesses. He's pulling on the string from a position of internal strength. For Mort that is a thinking model.

The second position is that when he gets proactive, the string immediately feels easier for him. When he is reactive, it does not work as well, the string feels tangled. He senses this more than thinks it; it's a feeling model for him.

Taking a half hour to choose the right end of the string allowed Mort to choose the right path for moving forward with his career. It made the decisions much simpler.

What's his choice? He picked up his coffee and said: "I better start a new company."

Following on from the previous post, let's take a look at some practical examples of using String Theory (as I called it) in real business examples. This one is about unraveling company politics. Organizations have politics and they get knotty. Here's a case where we worked out a better answer.

Liz called with a difficult problem that came from success. In the middle of her career in high tech, she'd joined an old line financial services company. They asked her to help them build partnerships with 'new wave' companies. She was perfect for them, and a challenge. The company management (lets call it FinServ) chose her because she is part of their future. The tension comes because she is a fast mover in an industry that has shifted slowly. Not all of the company executives have the same bias to action. And Liz called me because that was suddenly a problem.

It started when Liz started to land customers with names and valuations that were on the same level as FinServ. Then she had a phenomenon that she didn't expect - competition from within her company. It seemed that everyone wanted to meet with the customer, and to work their own projects with the client. Executives and managers from all over FinServ were calling her customer.

If that happens once or twice, it is not a big deal. However, the client's top managers were getting multiple calls each week. Worse, the offers and proposals often conflicted with each other. FinServ was competing with FinServ.

For a short while it was flattering for the client, then it became a nuisance. Liz started to be concerned that FinServ looked more than a little disorganized. Her worry was that FinServ's credibility was challenged and so was hers. She was apprehensive that she might lose the customer if this continued.

Liz isn't a part of the informal power structure at FinServ and she had limited organizational authority. She wanted to fix this issue. It would be difficult to arrange, but she wanted to sit down with FinServ's President. She wanted him to mandate that contact with the customer be co-ordinated with her team. Divisional independence is valued at FinServ. Her request would be a hard sale and might be seen as a power grab.

Liz and Finserv had a difficult problem. I like and respect difficult problems. So we got into string theory.

The basic idea is simple enough - there are two answers to the question of how to open a bag of grain that is sewn shut. You can pull at the string from either end of the closure. One end of the string is difficult and gets more so as you tug harder. Pulling on the correct end is easy, one tug and you have success.

The solution isn't to pull harder. The solution is to choose the right end to pull.

Choosing sides in FinServ would be very difficult, and the string was clearly going to knot up if she promoted one internal group over another. The wrong end of the string was to fight politics with more politics inside FinServ. Choosing a side there was very difficult. That is usually a sign that we are on the wrong end of the string.

However, not trying to solve this was worse. She might lose the customer. That would be bad for FinServ, and bad for Liz.

She decided that the right end of the string would be to focus solely on what is best for the customer, not FinServ. So she sat down and laid out what it would mean for the customer if FinServ burned them off. She showed how FinServ could best support that customer. Not from her company's point of view, but from how the customer saw it. Her new plan was to go to FinServ's president and say: "Here is what is right for the customer, not for any one group in FinServ. Would you sign onto this plan if it helps the customer first? If it includes a primary point of contact?" She chose to pull the string from the customer perspective, not the FinServ perspective. It was a risk, but it felt to her like the correct risk to take.

It meant that she'd ask the CEO to tell every manager or executive in FinServ that the company was going to support a customer first plan. She'd have to remain completely neutral by focusing solely on what was best for the customer.

Would this be easy? Probably not. Would it be easier than trying to manage the FinServ political landscape? No question. Starting with the customer needs and making them the only criteria was right end of the string.

You already know that because you are wise, experienced and successful it doesn't make meetings better. This quick note, prompted by my friend Jonathan, is about a practical structure that you can use that can dramatically shorten and improve your meetings: Success criteria.

Success Criteria This comes from a technique that our firm uses to keep complex projects on target. I hate time wasting sessions, so we use this structure to get more value from less time in meetings. It's simple. It works.

We all use agendas, and what an agenda describes is the topic. This note is about much more. What I'm asking you to do is go further and to describe the outcome you want from your meeting. Before you start the meeting, answer a simple question: "When we are done in an hour, what will have changed?" The answer to that is your success criterion for that meeting.

The discipline is to have the success criteria in your mind before the meeting starts. Let me be clear: If you haven't defined success for the meeting before you start, you deserve to have a mediocre meeting. And you probably will. What I am asking you to do, what works, is to know how to define success around where you are going before you ask your team to sit down together.

TV or Conversation? Let's consider two different kinds of meetings. One is where you want to disseminate information. This is like broadcast TV. You're the host, and they're the audience receiving information from you.

The second is a meeting where you are looking for buy-in. For that you want engagement, and the sense of dialog can help. Think of this as conversation mode, where you talk with the team, not at them, to generate acceptance of an idea.

For the broadcast meeting (TV mode) the success criteria are easy. It could be as simple as: "When we are done, I'll have told you about the quarterly numbers."

Putting Success Criteria Into Your Meeting To implement this success criteria strategy, schedule a meeting. Then ask yourself what you want to see changed by the end by the end of that meeting. For instance, do you want your team to have:

Learned something specific?

Bought into something?

Developed a solution that they can all support?

Told you something specific that you need to know?

Whatever the answer, make it measurable and then use it to fill in the blank: - When we are done here at 3 pm, __________ will have happened. Then tell the team as you open the meeting.

For a bit more effectiveness, put your success criteria on the whiteboard, and ask if everyone is OK with it. Wait for their answer.

You get even more effectiveness when, at the end of the meeting, you go back to what you wrote on the whiteboard and say: - When we started an hour ago, this was the target. Are you comfortable that we made it?

And wait for the answer.

This whole thing will feel incredibly clumsy the first time you do it. Then the second through fifth times, it will just feel kind of clumsy. But by the end of three to six cycles of this you'll love the results.

You've probably told people that finding problems is a good thing. Problems indicate that you're making progress. And you also know that solving problems quickly is just as good.

I'm going to assume that you don't need advice on how to make problems. This article is about a practical method to solve your problems more quickly. It may sound odd to you, but I'm going to ask you to pull your own strings here.

An Example: Starting with A Knotty Problem A few years ago we were involved in a messy competitive sales situation. We were bidding to provide consulting services to a telephone company in the Eastern United States. This company (we'll call it Telco) was trying to figure out how to reduce the cost of operations by $100 million dollars within 6 months. That was to pave the way to acquire another phone company by the end of the year. The mandate to cut that cost was coming from government regulators, and the Telco executive team was serious about making all of this happen.

Telco asked for bids from several consulting firms including mine. The specifications were very loose, the project ill defined, and the procurement process had become a complete mess for Telco. They had multiple bids, all so different that the offers couldn't be compared to each other. It was beginning to appear that it would take most of the year just to choose the consulting firm.

Choosing the Right End of the String Now to the string. Next time you are in a grocery store look for a bag of flour or grain that is sewn closed by one of those strings that you tug to open the bag.

You've seen this. When you pull on one end of the string that secures the bag, the knots get tighter and the string gets more intractable. You're pulling on the wrong end of the string.

However, when you go to the other end of the string, you can open the bag with one easy pull. Solving that problem is much quicker and easier when you start at the right end.

This isn't just for bags of flour or grain. The metaphor applies to problems like the one at Telco and perhaps in your own business. (This metaphor comes from Walter Method Messages by Florence Stranahan.)

The String at Telco All of us, vendors and the Telco team, were clearly pulling on the wrong end of the string. How could we tell? When we pulled harder, the problem just got knottier. We consultants were proposing apples and oranges by trying to define the project to match our own strengths. The purchasing and evaluating teams at Telco could not untangle a way to move forward. The team at Telco was getting frustrated.

So was I. I wanted to get on the right end of the string, hand it to the client, and have them pull it. At that point I was willing to lose the contract if it was best for getting the Telco merger accomplished. The senior Telco executive who owned this project told me that she was feeling just as frustrated. So on a Friday afternoon I called and made a radical suggestion. She agreed to it in about a minute.

On Monday I had Jan, the most aggressively independent and neutral facilitator I knew, in a conference room at Telco. Jan's travel and visit were on my nickel, but both she and I were clear that she did not care who paid her. Her job was to find the right end of the string no matter who won the contract. She was hired to advocate for Telco.

Jan had only one directive: To interview the top 12 Telco leaders and find the one string that was best for Telco's business. Not best for a vendor, best in the view of the Telco leaders. It didn't matter if that string favored a vendor, all that mattered was that Telco could look at the interview results and know that these were the right success criteria for starting and finishing the project.

You could argue that Telco should have already done this, and you'd be right. And you know that large organizations sometimes just can't seem to get to that. I was hiring Jan to help them do something that otherwise wasn't going to get done.

If you are leading a team like this, or facing a knotty problem like this, you are not alone. The solution is not in pulling the string harder and more heroically. The answer is in finding the right end of the string.

Finding the Right End of the String Jan started on Monday and by Friday of that week she had interviewed all 12 key leaders in person and had the 11 of them in the conference room with the sponsoring executive and I. Jan asked the Telco team to look at the various success criteria she pulled from the interviews. She put all the relevant criteria on a whiteboard. (This is a process that my firm uses often.) She asked the team to select the success criteria that were right for Telco, not for the vendors. She then stood back and let them argue about which one or ones were right for them.

Jan was telling the team to find the correct end of the string. In the prior 9 months they hadn't done this. Now it was time, and in two hours, they chose three criteria on which they all agreed.

This wasn't fast or pretty, but Jan facilitated a conversation that helped the Telco team define a scope and plan that was the best for where they were. I took notes for the group, but the Telco team did all the work.

Did It Work? Yes, but what worked here? The correct end of string was defined by the customer needs, not anyone else' ideas. It seemed like a flash of the blindingly obvious. This was the right end of the string for this project.

The senior executive took my notes to her office, read them, and immediately directed (not asked) Jan to start work on making the plan happen. Since Jan worked for me, the competitive bidding was over. The project started that night and we all worked through the weekend and the rest of the month. In effect, the bidding nightmare ended the moment the team chose the right end of the string to pull.

In 6 months Telco satisfied the regulators. Three months later they bought the other company. Pulling the string from that end, the customer's definition of success, was what worked.

You could read this as a victory for my firm, and we were happy to do the work. However the real victory was for Telco. They made the choice to stop pulling on the wrong end and to go find the right end of the string. What was the right end? It was choosing the success criteria for their own business irrespective of the tangential issues. Once they agreed on the criteria that helped Telco position for buying the other company, the answers were as simple as opening that bag of flour. The right end of the string was clear once they stopped straining on the wrong end.

The Winning Strategy What is the strategy you might take away from this? Start with this idea: - If the problem that you are trying to solve seems complicated, knotty, and unclear, you are pulling on the wrong end of the string.

If you want to find the right end: - Write down your success criteria and then eliminate everything else. You'll find the right end of the string right in front of you.

It started with what appeared to be a stroke. Yes, this is about your business, please stick with me here. We'll highlight something that can help you to grow your business more consistently and systematically.

The stroke patient assumed that his event was part of the unstoppable decline of his brain. His assumption: Brain death is a given. With that assumption neuroplasticity must be impossible.

And now you may be asking what neuroplasticity might be. This may be over simple, but neuroplasticity is what happens when patients re-route their own neural pathways so that different parts of the brain take on new functions. That suggests that our mind can repair our brain. For centuries this was considered impossible.

Now there is plenty of literature to support the sensibleness of neuroplasticity. So today I can turn to my friend and say:

"20 years ago, your stroke would be considered permanent damage. Here in 2016 your doctor has studies that demonstrate that you might be able to repair your neurological injury without surgery. Are you interested?"

This question is going to generate a conversation. In a few paragraphs I'll bring it around to our businesses, but let's consider how to explain the brain part in plain English.

Example: Treatment for One Patient What I say here will become part of the business discussion. It'll be simplistic but accurate enough to say something like:

"When you drive to work, and the freeway is under construction, you can route around the blockage. If you have to repeat the detour for enough days you just adapt. You still get to work in an automatic manner. You make a good route and continue to use it. "You don't need a surgeon to do that do you? You just explore the alternatives yourself. It's almost second nature to assume that it will work. And when you hit that roadblock the first time you don't need to know exactly how you'll adapt. But you assume that you will find a way to make it work.

"The same thing can happen in your brain. Your synapses hit a block, and you can just stop and sit there and wait. Or you can make a different route. We used to think that impossible. Now we call it neuroplasticity.

"This always starts with assumption and conviction. In the traffic metaphor, you're assuming that you'll make it happen for your drive. That conviction, that you'll do this, is the key that helps you transition from stuck in traffic to moving on a new path. You don't need to know the next turn to feel sure that you can make one happen.

"The studies show is that this assumption is clearly transferable from car traffic to your neurology. That means that the solution is not in knowing the exact path. The solution is in knowing that you'll make a path."

In other words, the key to making this work is asking the patient to decide that he can reroute. I'm not trying to show the patient how to reroute. I am confident that when he decides that he can, he'll do it. That sounds odd, but it is clinically pretty accurate.

Applying This to Your Business Your business will probably face roadblocks as it grows. The question is not if you will. The question is not whether you immediately know what to do, you may or may not. The question is:

"What assumptions do you and your team members make when the road crumbles in front of you?"

This is may sound odd, but I'm not asking you to assume that you will find new paths, nor take them. I'm asking you to assume that you will make them. Lets look at two examples.

Examples: Making Sales Happen This can be as simple as when sales project comes to a roadblock. Early in my career I was close to finishing a deal to provide an important solution to a turbine company. The customer's executives had chosen our solution, verbally committed, and then told people outside their company. We felt pretty good about it.

Until the CFO discovered that he could neither pay cash for the project, nor tap his credit. The sale was going on hold because the CFO could not get the money until the next year. It was clear that the President of the turbine company wanted do this project immediately, but said that he felt limited in what he could do. He felt compelled to delay. However, to me a postponement would be tantamount to losing the sale.

What you want in your representative is someone who will not stop just because the CEO says no. You want a representative who will start face a roadblock and assume that his or her job is to look around the roadblock and make, not find but make, a solution. The ultimate solution isn't clear, but the assumption is.

In this case we built a custom lease for the customer and closed the sale in a week. The President got the value for his company he wanted. But that isn't the point is it? The point is that my team all assumed that we would make this work.

I had a similar situation with the owner of a chain of newspapers. He chose my solution and started to implement it. However, the many unions couldn't agree among themselves on how to support our project and everything stalled. It wasn't about the project. It was about politics between union locals. However, this was halting any chance to get the value the plan could bring.

The owner wouldn't accept the statement that "it can't be done." This man had a long history of exceeding previous limits, and his business and social stature reflected that. He assumed that we would make a way. He asked my help and we made a path for it to happen.

The solution we crafted kept his papers growing for several years. It happened when he worked from the assumption that he could and would make a new path inside his plants.

The 2x2 Growth Grid Those examples might be a flash of the blindingly obvious to you. That is a good thing, but lets look at how this works.

Remember the 2x2 Growth Grid from a previous post? It has a vertical axis of 'limited or growth' and 'take or make' on the horizontal axis.

Lets map the examples here. The President of the turbine company was in the lower left corner. He was assuming a limited capacity. He chose to take the options provided, not try to make any. The owner of the newspaper chain made a different choice. He was focused on growing past previous limits and choosing to make a new path instead of taking the case presented by the unions. The owner of the newspapers was up and to the right on this grid.

This is about our operating assumptions. We control those. How we do that happens deep in the fabric of the business, just like changing neural pathways. This is about choosing business neuroplasticity. And we can make that choice.

The otherwise impossible solutions work when you start with the assumption that you can grow and that you can make instead of just accept what seems to be there. The same is true when you choose, even though it might be heretical, to do this in your business.

From Intuition to Successful Growth For the patient, for the sales person, for the CEO, for the owner, the key to success isn't knowing what path she or he will take. It is his or her personal assumption that she or he will make the path the company needs.

You know intuitively that not all salespeople and not all executives are excited about making a new path. For them the pattern of success from the past is the right starting assumption. The past is always relevant, but it doesn't guide us. We get to make our own choices here. Do we assume growth? Do we assume that we make instead of take? Do we assume that we can build new paths? When we do, we are performing neuroplasticity on our business. And we are promoting sustainable growth.

Where do you start if you want to grow revenue? Let's look at a different approach.

When you use your phone or computer, you use an OS. It is the basic set of rules and assumptions for your device. They are in place when you boot up.

It is the same with projects to increase revenue. When your sales, marketing, operations, and customer service teams start up tomorrow morning they'll start with rules and assumptions already in place. This enables your revenue growth. Let's explore that for a second.

Booting Up But first, do you remember BIOS? Whenever your PC style computer boots, there is a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS firmware) that tells your computer how to think. It sets the assumptions for hardware and software.

You should never see the BIOS, but you'll often find the limits it sets on your machine's performance. Someone invested a lot of time and money to set the assumptions for you. Your business machine deserves the same care and thought if you want it to run smoothly. And that takes your attention.

The Starting Point Lets start with the two assumptions from this book: - Would you want your sales team to work from an assumption of limits or an assumption that they should strive for more growth? - Should the team assume that they take revenue or that they make revenue?

The assumption of limits vs. growth is fundamental to how they approach their territories. The choice of taking what comes or making things happen is fundamental to how they generate you revenue growth. These make up part of the BIOS for your sales team. (And for your marketing, product, operations, HR, and other teams.)

Who is responsible for the OS for your sales teams? Who sets the assumptions with which they start every day? This isn't a sales training issue. This is a cultural question. Who is responsible for the culture of the team that grows your business? Do you want to accept that this is correct for you, or do you want to help make the assumptions better? Who should make that decision if not you?

When your sales team boots up today, do they assume what you would want them to assume? This is the key leverage point for your revenue. This is where you can have immense impact on the way your business grows.

Timing This is not a once per year discussion; no more than BIOS is updated once each year. You can cause a refresh of your sales/finance/operations/service team's BIOS next Monday. Or next quarter. But why wait to start right?

If you want some suggestions, look at Mindset by Carol Dweck or Ansel Adams' Autobiography. Or give me a call. But let's make it an intentional choice.

This is the true story of how a CEO lost an important sale—and how he could have won it. If you are selling ideas to an investor, a colleague, a customer, or someone you want to be on board with you, this story might help you to get them used. What was the CEO trying to sell? He was making a pitch to get enough money to keep his company alive. He was selling an idea, and he failed. This is a story of listening and asking, and what you'll find here might make you more productive at selling your own ideas. Selling ideas can be difficult. It isn't just a transaction; you want your idea to be implemented. For that you need to get an emotional as well as an intellectual purchase. You need to be heard. Whether you are a technical expert or a business unit manager, getting your idea utilized is key to helping any division or company grow. Losing this kind of sale and implementation can cripple your efforts—and perhaps your business.

How the CEO Lost the Sale

The story starts with Heidi Roizen, the operating partner at DFJ. DFJ (formerly Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson) is a successful venture capital firm. Heidi is one of the best-known entrepreneurs in the technology world. But this is not about the firm, it is about one failed attempt to sell an idea, as she experienced it. This story illuminates the difference between, and value of, both listening and asking. It's a key lesson that you can use to sell essential ideas both inside and outside your business.

As Heidi tells it, she came into a meeting with the CEO and as she sat down she raised her hand to ask for time. Heidi explained that she had just returned from dropping her son off for his first year at college. Anyone who has had a child leave for college will recognize the emotions, and Heidi was still feeling them. She was also self-aware enough to know that she needed to pause and reset in order to give this guy a fair hearing. So she asked for the breathing space to do that.

The entrepreneur nodded, barely paused, opened his computer, and said: “OK, let's get at it.”

That was the moment his pitch failed. He did not get Heidi's support for funding from DFJ. What might have saved the deal, and maybe his company? Listening and Asking.

Listening: Respecting the Emotional Context It is easy to say that the CEO deserved to be dismissed for being rude. But if rudeness were enough to disqualify entrepreneurs from getting funding, there would be a lot fewer successful startups in Silicon Valley. Something more fundamental was missing here: Listening and Asking. Since Heidi was the person the CEO wanted to persuade, it makes sense to start with her perspective.

“Most entrepreneurs,” Heidi says “come to us and treat us like trolls on the bridge guarding a giant pile of money. If they get past us, they get the money and the experience is over and they go do good things.

“That is not how we see it as venture capitalists. We look at these deals as long-term relationships. If we invest with someone, we'll be working with him or her for up to 10 years. I have to look at these guys as people whom I want to work with closely.”

In other words, DFJ invests as an active owner/partner, not a bank. The firm wants to be engaged in how the small company operates and grows and be closely involved. To make that work here, Heidi's team has to feel personally comfortable with the CEO and his team. If the CEO does not show the ability to listen and ask, it is a sign to Heidi that he may not be able to work smoothly with her team. No matter how compelling the business case, if the CEO wanted to sell the idea of investing in his company, he needed to understand DFJ's definition of success. To get that, he needed to connect with Heidi as a person, not a checkbook or even a businessperson.

The same applies to any situation where you want your idea to be implemented. Making a one-time sale can happen based on purely logical answers. Getting an implementation requires that the people buying your idea be supportive and feel involved. It is an emotional sale as well as an intellectual one.

How could the CEO who came to ask for that giant pile of money have done better? If he had listened to the emotional context, respected Heidi's need for a short time reset, and put his own issues aside for a minute, he could have gotten a lot further with his pitch.

But would that have been enough? The truth is, giving her space to come back emotionally would have been a necessary first step. However, if you want to get an idea seriously considered and then implemented, listening and providing emotional space is insufficient. The other party's involvement in the success of your idea starts when you ask.

Asking: The Importance of Perception Listening for the emotion is table stakes: You absolutely need to do it, but it just gets you started. Asking is the other key factor. As important as listening for emotions would have been in this meeting, there was a clear mismatch. From Heidi's perspective, the mismatch was between how the entrepreneur saw her firm, and how the firm adds value.

No matter how the entrepreneur really saw it, if Heidi thought he viewed her as a troll and her firm as a checkbook, she wasn't going to buy his ideas. How could he have helped her accept and adopt his ideas? Just saying that he understood would not have been enough.

To truly sell his ideas, he would need to ask for her success criteria for the meeting and for a great investment. Asking for success criteria is not just being polite. If you want to get your ideas sold and then implemented, start with asking about success as the implementers see it.

The CEO needed to sell an idea to Heidi to get her firm's support. And despite the fact that she was looking to invest in the right firm, Heidi had her own success criteria. To be clear, this is not about what the CEO wanted in his mind; this is about her perception of him from the first moments.

Why Can't He or She See What Is Obvious to You?

The CEO may have come into the meeting working from a perfectly logical position. He had an idea of value, and believed DFJ could make more money by funding his idea. Logically he might assume that he did not need any more support for his pitch. After all, DFJ is made up of very bright people.

However, even smart people are not logic machines. Economic models and marketing plans constantly fail when they rely on the assumption of a fully rational buyer. What is analytically obvious to you may be uncomfortable to someone you wish would implement your idea.

Your success depends, then, on their commitment not just to understand, but to feel comfortable implementing. A commitment to act is as much emotional as analytical. You'll succeed at selling the idea when you work from the premise that there is more than analytical thinking at work in any transaction.

There is a reason that most great leaders are charming as well as logical. Great persuasion includes both feeling and thinking. If you want to sell an idea and get it implemented, then you want to transcend the purely logical position and include an equal part of emotion.

By not listening to Heidi's feelings and not asking for her success criteria, the CEO got exactly what he deserved. He lost the acceptance of his idea, and perhaps threatened the success of his company.

Two Steps to Get Your Idea Sold and Implemented What is the best way to handle this kind of pitch? Start with realizing that you have a potential customer here. Whether they work for your company or not, they are a customer for your idea and implementing it. Don't assume that you know how your customer sees it. Ask. The simple question would be: “What will make this a good idea for you to implement?” Even if you think you already know the answer, it's the right question.

The following are the two steps to make your pitch work and get your idea implemented:

1 - Listen to the customer on both an emotional and analytical level.

2 - Ask for the customer's success criteria, and then be very clear that you understand them.

What would have been good practice in this situation? To ask Heidi how she defines success in this investment. Then perhaps to close the computer and talk to her as a partner instead of a checkbook. Either would have resulted in a much more productive meeting for both of them.

It's difficult to be a successful executive or salesperson if you can't learn to “hear” emotions. Not hearing the emotive messages from customers and colleagues means that you miss half the critical information you need to be average, much less superb, at your job.

If you listen well, you are aware of both the emotive and analytical messages without projecting your own agenda. If you want to build relationships with customers, ask for success criteria at the start of every important conversation. You will grow your sales, your time, and probably your grins. Try it the next time you want to call on someone important to your success.

Notes While this article focuses on selling ideas, many readers will be interested in the world of venture capitalists. If you are interested in VCs, and perhaps in pitching to them, here are some resources:

For information on Heidi Roizen: www.heidiroizen.com -- Site the CEO could have viewed before visiting Heidii

For information on DFJ: http://dfj.com/ --- Another site he could have visited

For information on how to pitch a VC, some resources recommended by insiders include: - Warp-Speed Growth, by Peter Meyer. Published by Amacom

- The Startup Game: Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs by William H. Draper, published by St. Martin's Griffin

- The Art of the Start 2.0 by Guy Kawasaki and Lindsey Filby, published by Portfolio

For more information on crafting presentations: - Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, updated and expanded edition by Jerry Weissman, published by Pearson.

]]>iworldclassdesign@gmail.com (Peter Meyer)BlogFri, 11 Aug 2017 03:06:14 +0000You Can Get Even Better at Earning Long Term Customershttp://meyergrp.com/index.php/blog/item/18-you-can-get-even-better-at-earning-long-term-customers
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The Best Practice to Grow Customer Loyalty.

If you want consistent revenue growth for your business, it makes sense to systematically build long term customer relationships.

Customers typically buy from one of three points of view. 1 - Some customers buy because he or she truly likes and trusts the salesperson. 2 - Others buy from you because your rep gives them exactly what they want. This usually means discounts and special terms. 3 - There are situations where customers buy to get real business value and your team consistently delivers that. When these customers feel good about doing that for themselves, they can have intense loyalty to you. If that is what you want, keep reading.

In the first case, having charming salespeople does work. It works for you because people buy from people. However it leaves you vulnerable. If you are in a highly competitive market, having a charming salesperson can be the difference between making your sales numbers and missing them. However, you are at risk because likable salespeople can be out charmed by someone from another company. Worse, your competition might hire your representative. You might lose the customer as he or she follows the charming salesperson. Relying on charm leaves your business vulnerable.

In the second case, you can earn the business. However you get to support higher administrative costs with less revenue. Worse, if you discount for some customers you usually wind up discounting again and again with them and then with other customers. It is a downward spiral that crushes your margins.

The third case requires a totally different strategy. You focus on identifying, with the customer, exactly what he or she needs to grow their business. However, your margins and top line improve when a customer buys for him or herself and chooses you to be part of that. This builds long term loyalty.

To earn long term customers, a best practice is to build a virtuous cycle of: A - Learning the customer's needs to grow his or her own business, B - Delivering against those needs, C - Showing that you listen, and then D - Getting to hear about the next set of essential needs.

When you do that, you become part of the customer's own internally driven growth process. You integrate into their business plans and assumptions.

That loyalty will always be stronger than the loyalty to a charming or discounting salesperson. Building this cycle will inoculate you from the most likable salespeople in other companies. Because customers value a partner who listens, doing the cycle builds consistent revenue over time. This is what gives you the best chance of systematically growing your revenue, so lets focus there.

Salespeople as Leaders Builds Loyalty to Your Business You don't need to send people to charm school. Instead, train your salespeople to be accepted as leaders with your customers. Not just suppliers of service and product, they should take a leadership role as well.

What does it mean to lead a customer? Lets start with the way that Barbara Kamm (CEO of Tech Credit Union in San Jose, CA) explains leadership.

". . .leadership is about making people like themselves when they are in your presence."

To practice doing this, your sales team need not focus on product knowledge or on being charming. Instead, have them focus on the skills to help your customer feel good about themselves when your salesperson is there. This works best when you intentionally add value to the customer's business. That means value as the customer perceives it, not as you wish that they would perceive it. It comes from asking about the value as the customer sees it. It never comes from assuming you understand the value to the customer.

And it usually means helping the customer grow their business, not just saving money. It's about supporting their gain, not just resolving their pain.

You will earn the most loyalty with your customers when your sales people take a leadership role to help the customer to grow their business. That happens when your sales people help your customers feel good about themselves. Not good about you, about themselves when they deal with you.

What are the keys to your salespeople helping the customer feel good about themselves? The first step is when you help the customer to learn. In a practical sense and in an emotional sense we all respond well to chances to learn. If your team helps someone to learn, that adds real value to your customer. That in turn helps generate sincere and lasting loyalty to your business. When your customer starts to use you to help their business to grow, you are earning their loyalty.

Learning rarely happens when your sales team talks, but it does happen when they ask good questions and then clearly listen. The key skill that you want to see your reps develop is asking great questions. These would be questions that help both the customer and the rep learn about the customer's business. Then your responsibility becomes to make sure that your business delivers value as the customer sees it.

The Best Practice to Grow Customer Loyalty The best practice works like this. The rep goes into the customer but doesn't pitch your company or your products. Instead, she asks questions about the customer's business. Some are obvious, but if she focuses on the future as well as the present, she can ask questions that will bring thoughtful silence. These will be questions from which the customer and she both learn. The Forum Group calls these "High Gain questions." They truly are, because you gain and your customer gains when you ask them.

It can be as simple as asking: - Where will you get your new customers next month? - Where will you get your new customers in 12 months? - Where will you get your new customers in 24 months?

When your salesperson asks the right questions, she learns what really matters to the customer for his or her business future. The closing question then becomes: "If we can help you resolve this, would you like to know more?" If the answer is yes, then she requests a follow-up meeting.

The best way that you can support your customer is to carefully listen to what your salesperson learned. This helps you to learn as well; and it helps you to make sure that your representative has a solution that will solve the problem.

Every time you follow this pattern, you combine adding value with helping the customer feel good about themselves when he or she works with your team. When they feel good about themselves around you, and you deliver value, you have the combination that you want. When you help a customer learn, they feel good around you and your team. You will earn their long term loyalty.

]]>iworldclassdesign@gmail.com (Peter Meyer)BlogFri, 04 Aug 2017 03:07:12 +0000When is it OK for Another Business to Be Cause for My Business?http://meyergrp.com/index.php/blog/item/19-when-is-it-ok-for-another-business-to-be-cause-for-my-business
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On Monday I came in to my office to find no phone and no Internet. Again.

I took this project for myself, and spent almost an hour on my cell phone talking to - but not communicating with - AT&T support.

Ten hours later I'm looking at what I have learned while two technicians are wandering around outside waiting for another tech, somewhere else, to accomplish some task that was supposed to have been done hours ago. Besides offering these guys coffee there isn't much else to do for them. I can only do things for me.

So what have I learned? I've learned something about customer service. I've learned even more about me.

On customer service - I will never again tell a client to train the front line staff to listen, then to repeat what the customer said, and then to ignore the customer. These are intelligent people who work for AT&T. When I pointed out that they were listening and then ignoring what I said, almost every one of the employees agreed with me. They then ignored my comments about that as well.

I choose to help my clients do better than this. But that wasn't my real work on Monday. My work was to treat AT&T as it really is - unimportant.

And I mean that in the kindest way.

The company is an artifact. It was designed with historical standards to meet ancient perceived needs. AT&T is NOT a person. It's NOT alive. It cannot frustrate me. Only I can frustrate me.

I always ask my team to talk about what we will do, not what we can't do. I hold myself to the same standard. So my work is to focus on moving forward and not to deal with AT&T at all.

It starts with a deep mental breath. When one of the techs calls to say that he is lost and needs directions, and we both discover that he is the wrong tech for this problem and agree that he can't fix it, and then he ignores me, I get to take a very deep mental breath. There is absolutely no point in pushing my own buttons over this.

This isn't about AT&T. It is about any time I feel in the control of another company. It happens all the time with each of us as business owners or managers. We're in communities that have dozens of members who seem to want to have some form of control over us. They can be suppliers, competitors, customers, and partners. And they seem to be able to push our buttons. And then we do things that are unnatural for us.

What do I mean by unnatural? Giving the authority for our growth to another company is unnatural. Think about it. Most of the requests we get from companies are about solving an immediate need instead of supporting long-term progress. And every time we give authority to another person or company, we stunt our own progress.

On the other hand, what is natural? Guiding our own growth. And then exercising our own strengths to make them stronger.

Taking even 20 minutes of my day to get unhappy with AT&T is really about a wider question: Am I giving my authority to a corporation?

In other words: Am I performing an unnatural act?

When I look at what really is natural, I can think and feel my conviction of why I am here. I am here to grow, and help others do the same if they wish. I am here to consciously enjoy the fullness of what I am capable of doing.

My business is designed clearly and specifically to support growth for my clients, my team, and me. When I take that deep mental breath, I can enjoy that growth. And when I do, AT&T's problems evaporate just like mist in the sun.

What is the basic principle here? It's that I am governor of my fate. Not that I control AT&T, but that I control how I act around my sense of the company. The natural position is that my business uses them as my tool, but my business not dependent on them.

I work with lots of other businesses, but they do not govern what I do. They do not have lives of their own. I am the governor of my own business. When I take that position, I am stronger and my business reflects that in the top and bottom lines. My business and I grow naturally no matter what AT&T and other corporations do or don't do.

What is it worth to you to grow access to your time? Is it even possible?

Getting to the right answer starts with asking if you are growing or finding. Most managers ask if they can find time and then conserve it. When you ask if you can grow your access to it you are working from a different starting point.

Time is like any natural resource with which you build products. Like any other raw material, you use it but it's never in charge of you. Like a crop, assume that you manage your resources. When you start with that position, you can find that you can grow it.

Starting With Boundaries

In her role as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tech CU in Silicon Valley, Barbara Kamm grows her access to time with boundaries and with confidence from self. She starts by scheduling time that she wants to have.

"We schedule meetings. We should also schedule other things that are important. If I want time to think or do some work, it doesn't (happen) unless I deliberately block it off."

For Barbara this is not about scheduling. It's about boundaries, and willingness to hold to them. "You have to set those boundaries. If you don't your schedule will be everybody else's schedule." That requires confidence in your ability to be in charge of your most important resource: Your self. That is from where she starts to grow time.

Barbara's boundaries are about prioritization and discipline. Part of the discipline is choosing what not to do. In the same way that a farmer improves her agricultural yield by not planting too much, you grow your available time by choosing what not to plant into your calendar.

Charles Rogers from technology leader Nexmo is finding the right boundary for himself and his team. He wants his direct employees to do things on their own but he wants some things done right every time. He recognizes that he can't grow his team, or himself, if he tries to manage what the team does in every important task. So he sets boundaries. He gives his staff great latitude right up until they produce customer-facing materials. Then he gets involved to check what the customer will see to ensure that it meets the standard that he sets.

This boundary is clear for the team. If the deliverable meets his standard, then he does not need to spend time on why and how. If it doesn't meet the standard, he can tell the individual what would meet the standard and to try again. If the work is not customer facing, he can keep a much looser hand on what is produced. Charles no longer does or even checks all the work his team produces. He reviews it later for his own understanding, and he invests his best time into work that is customer facing.

As Charles does this he is saying no to doing work that his team can and should do. Leaving something alone is difficult. Saying no to a meeting or a priority is not always easy. He does it because he feels confident in where he is taking himself. It works when he is confident from his core values, from self.

Charles is growing time for things that he wants on his schedule. By using boundaries and trust, Charles grows the time that he can access for critical issues that he should handle. He feels more ownership of his day.

Using Boundaries Like a Jigsaw Puzzle Box Top

Making the choice to let people learn is about choosing and holding a boundary. Barbara and Charles work on the assumption that you can and should know the details of what is going on in key parts of your business. Their boundary is the line between knowing it and doing it. This is assigning a jigsaw puzzle, showing the box top and then letting the team assemble the pieces without your intervention. You define the box top. The team assembles the pieces their own way. You inspect the result. You don't invest time building it. Once you set the box top, you have set the boundaries and you can step away from the way it will get assembled.

Boundaries can be difficult. Holding boundaries requires self-confidence on your part and on your team's part. Helping your team can be an exercise in assisting them to recognize their own confidence. That means helping them see their internal strength.

As you do this, you may not get quick results. You will get to invest trust in them for a while before it pays off with them trusting themselves and then you. Investing in that now helps you grow more access to time later. The payoff is very worthwhile.

The Question That Divides Teams and Limits Growth

I often make a simple request of teams. I ask them to tell me:

- "Can you ask yourself a question for which you cannot find an answer?"

Over hundreds of conversations in which I have asked that question, the answer was obvious to almost every person whom I asked. In most teams, members are shocked to find that their coworkers have a different answer than they do. That difference matters.

Consider: If you lead a team of people where half think the answer is yes and half say no, will that impact how the team works together? If they don't work as well together, what does that mean for your growth?

Either they know that they'll to find the answer, or they put themselves in a more restricted place where the answers have to come from outside themselves. If you want to grow your time, you'll want to get all of your key team members to agree on the same answer to that question. This is a core value. It defines boundaries which each individual chooses as real.

If your team does not agree on one answer to this question, you want to know now and not later. To grow your time, you need to understand how you and your team set boundaries.

We each set our own boundaries. When we do, we limit what we can and will do in a given set of situations. Ethical behavior is a boundary. Fiduciary responsibility is a boundary. So is the choice to not do the work of others. As is the choice to allow mistakes, starting with each of us allowing ourselves to err. We need boundaries in business to manage well. That question about capabilities shows a current boundary that we hold.

Each of us can do this. Each of us can set boundaries. Each of us is strong enough to enforce the boundaries we set. That strength comes from within, and with confidence from self.

That leads to a question on empowerment: Who empowers your team?

Who Empowers Your Team?

Another question I use to illuminate key boundaries is: - Are you empowered by the company, or - Are you empowered by your self?

The first is empowered by an outside power, the second empowered from within. There is no wrong answer. What is worth knowing is whether members of the same team have different answers. That disparity would make it hard to manage the team to the same goals. This is another core value for your team.

Managing that disparity in your team is time consuming, not time growing. It starts with you as the leader. You can address the question and grow your time, starting now.

Applying This In A Regulated Business

When Barbara took her CEO role, Tech CU was following a traditional path. The good news about most credit unions is that they have a predictable business model. They are retail businesses, working with individual savers and borrowers. The bad news is that in a difficult economy the retail business is like a one legged stool; it is unstable. In the case of her CU, "I believed that to stay exclusively on a retail platform was akin to a slow death."

To grow instead of die, Barbara chose to develop a commercial portfolio. Retail and commercial are two different kinds of business catering to two different kinds of customers. When one revenue stream is down, the other can cover for it.

Retail banking is about many similar transactions. These regulations are "cookie cutter." In the retail world, borrowers are treated as individuals but the CU does not address each transaction uniquely. Exceptions are to be minimized.

Commercial banking requires constant development and monitoring of individual transactions. Instead of groups of transactions, each loan is individually crafted and managed. The banker succeeds when he or she knows each customer well and is able to craft the package around each. In the commercial business exceptions are desirable.

Running that commercial business is entirely different from running a retail banking operation. Tech CU's team was expert in retail banking. The regulators responsible for ensuring that the CU is well run were just as expert in retail. However, they are unfamiliar with commercial.

When the CU added commercial loans "the regulators (started) to quake in their boots. They don't understand business loans. We have to be very patient about explaining what we are doing and why." The team's position is that they might be: ". . .training the regulators. We can help them learn." And it was and is clear that the overseers need to learn in their own way. They needed a good box top. They also need to work the puzzle on their own.

When the regulators come to the CU, the team there is both supportive and willing to hold to boundaries. The team members show their support when they are happy to help the regulators understand this different business.

The test comes when a regulator insists on treating commercial loans as though they are retail. An agency supervisor may insist on enforcement that would hurt the commercial customer, the loan, or the result to the credit union. When that happens the CU team member has to stand up and say that their commercial customer needs to be treated differently from a consumer loan. The team member has to enforce a boundary.

"We are not going to let the regulators run our business for us. We are going to keep moving forward and doing the right thing." Here is where success requires confidence from self. "We are going to be questioned, we going to be possibly written up on examinations. We have to go" to uncomfortable places. However Barbara is clear that the CU wants the regulators to understand and support Tech CU team in this growth to a different market. "We have to do what it takes to bring the regulators along with us."

Does this grow access to time? In the short run, no. However, any other alternative is going to set up a constant contention between the governing bodies and the credit union. If that happens the customers lose and the CU loses. To grow time, to grow the CU, Barbara's team has to hold to boundaries immediately. You can direct this, and help everyone on the team feel confident in the group and in himself or herself. When you help them to do the puzzle assembly without you, it will increase your access to more time.

Managing From Boundaries

Can you grow your access to time? Can you grow confidence from self? You can. As you do, your business is easier to manage and to keep on the right track for sustainable growth.

Today, Barbara is managing a financial institution into the next level where it can be more stable. That would normally suck up an immense amount of time. However, now she is increasing her available time to do that well. She chooses to set boundaries, and hold to them. This works because she is driven from within instead of driven by the people around her.

Barbara and Charles must work with their teams and help them by setting the direction. Then Charles and Barbara make the conscious decision to trust their teams to do the right things inside boundaries that they set. They lead by setting puzzle box tops, by helping the team members feel competent to act on their own. Is there any reason that you cannot do the same?

Barbara put it well when she quoted a former mentor:

"Leadership is about making people like themselves when they are in your presence"

People are more likely to like themselves, and be more productive, when they are learning and when they feel confident in themselves. When you set boundaries, when you govern, and when you model confidence from within, you are helping make that happen. You grow your own business, from within you. And you grow your own access to time in the same way. When you work from this perspective, you are in charge of your time and so is your team. That is key to being in charge of your business.

Peter Meyer is a founder and principal of The Meyer Group, a management consulting firm specializing in creating new markets. He has done speaking tours on management, technology, and strategies throughout the United States and in Europe, the Far East, and Australia. He has also twice addressed the Commonwealth Club of California and guest lectured at the University of California and at Santa Clara University. He has published articles in Excellence Essentials, The Wall Street Journal, The Canadian Business Review, Business Horizons, Dateline, Internet Business Journal, Executive Female, and The Recorder as well as a profile of him in Entrepreneur.

If you want to speed the growth of your business, you can and should guide it by choosing to measure outcomes, not just outputs. Carefully setting up key performance indicators (KPIs) and using them correctly helps you grow time, revenue, and people in ways that contribute most to overall business growth. Doing it systematically can make that growth more intentional and less episodic. Consciously making the choice in the present can help make business growth sustainable over a longer period. This commentary is about making that choice.

In many businesses, managers track myriad activities. That is partly because there's a lot going on, but it's also partly because managers may not take the time (or be willing) to choose which outcomes really matter. Intentionally choosing your desired outcomes will guide where your business grows. Jonathan Becher, a senior executive of the multinational software company SAP, put it well: "The story of what you become as you grow up is based on the KPIs you choose." It means measuring outcomes, not outputs.

Outputs May Not Be Outcomes Let's take a moment to look at input, output, and outcome. Identifying key inputs for processes is easy with a critical path analysis. However, that does not help distinguish outputs from outcomes.

To distinguish them, consider that "outputs" are often activities and "outcomes" are desired results. For example, booking a sale is an essential output of the sales process, but collecting the revenue may be the outcome that you want your business to gain. Unfortunately for your business, if the sale is not solid or is for something that you can't provide, getting a booking may not result in revenue. This is just one example of how output does not always deliver the desired outcome. To grow your business along any sort of plan, you want your team focused on outcomes.

To explain output and outcome, consider the personal income for people who work in your business. What happens with salaries and spending can be an example of input, output, and outcome.

Your employees collect income in the form of salary, bonuses, and commissions. Many will spend most of that income to make ends meet each month. The input is easy to identify; they measure that in dollars. Many of your employees use their income to do or get what they need to build a fulfilled life. The input is financial. The output is products, services, or investments (perhaps a boat, a vacation, savings, or tutors for the children). The desired outcome is your employees feeling good about themselves and their families.

The output is money spent. Spending is a key activity to turn salary into a meaningful outcome. But who defines meaningful outcome? It has to be individual. Do your employees measure success by the money spent or the results of that spending? The output of money is a means to an end. Most of us define outcomes that reflect what we want after the money is spent. The real goal for most employees is choosing what they wish to do to achieve that end. That is the outcome.

Even if the outputs are similar, a good outcome for one employee would not work for her coworker and vice versa. One might want savings on which to retire and travel; another would design an investment program to support his children in college. Outcome is very individual.

Your employees individually choose their outputsâ€”perhaps putting their money into savings or tutors or a vacation home. They base those investment choices on the outcomes they wish to enjoy.

And how can they be most likely to get their desired outcomes? By defining them in advance. If they know what outcomes they wish, fulfillment is going to come more quickly and with less effort.

Why Choose Outcomes at the Start?In your business, you can either base your growth on hope or you can plan the pattern of your growth. Famously, hope is not a strategy. [Attributed to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, speaking at the Republican National convention, September 3, 2008.]

To systematically grow a business, the people involved should know what matters to the whole business. You want them to focus on important outcomes instead of everyday distractions. As the owner or manager, you get to broadcast desirable outcomes, not just focus on outputs. Planned growth can come from a conscious and specific choice of the outcomes that matter.

The Art of ChoosingBut planning also means carefully choosing a few specific outcomes for your team to focus on. In putting this work together, I interviewed dozens of executives who successfully lead growth. Over and over I find that they rely on no more than five KPIs. Asking your team to work to more than five KPIs is asking them to be unfocused. Just as bad, it is asking them to think that you might be unfocused.

There are two traditional ways to choose what outputs and outcomes to measure. The more common is to measure myriad indicators. It seems safer, because by measuring a lot of things you're covering all the bases. But you don't get planned growth for your business by covering all the bases and hoping that growth will happen. You grow it sustainably by targeting the outcomes you wish.

Measuring everything reflects an uncomfortable truth: Picking many metrics is easy but narrowing the choices can be difficult. Measuring everything often results in watching and then overreacting to things that you cannot control. As the leader, you are not going to quickly and systematically grow your revenue, time, and people by reacting primarily to the actions of people outside your business. Predictable growth happens when you govern and direct your business, not when you "go with the flow." That means measuring outcomes that you can directly influence.

Another common way to choose what to measure is to select outputs that are easy to understand even if they don't actually deliver the desired outcomes. Focusing on outputs instead of outcomes is tempting for many managers. Outputs are easy to measure here and now; outcomes seem to be in the future and ethereal. You can ask a team to focus on outputs such as getting a report done on time or meeting a sales quota. These are in their control; an outcome like customer satisfaction or overall revenue may be beyond their reach. You can and should work with them to get the right outputs to help deliver the outcome, but you have to be clear on the outcome you desire.

Measuring those outputs allows you to easily rank and rate effort in the moment. For that, the direct link from input to output is important. But measuring what a person or team delivers often results in an organization that is active at an individual level but may not be productive as an enterprise. Active individuals and an unproductive business is a combination that does not lead to predictable growth. In the personal financial example, two families could both be saving the same amounts of money, but that money does not automatically lead to a desired outcome.

One employee might collect as much money as possible without a plan to use it later. The employee who identifies the outcome she wants in advance will speed the delivery of that outcome with those savings. The money held in a savings account is the output. Not having an outcome in mind might reduce the value of the output.

A much more successful strategy is to choose the desired outcome and measure it. If you want to set up growth that is less episodic and more sustainable, this is the starting point. To program revenue or any other kind of growth into the business, or to do effective planning, you need to determine the outcomes you want to experience.

Choosing Now to Guide the Future of Your Business: An ExampleSAP is a company that has grown substantially in the past few decades. Today it is a 74,000-person organization that provides software that companies use to manage their business.

Jonathan Becher runs a business inside SAP that provides us with an example of using outcome-based measurements. SAP was built on selling enterprise-level software costing hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to buy and implement. The process of doing that has been based on person-to-person selling.

But what SAP had not previously done is to scale these business offerings to individual consumers in a user-friendly, even no-touch way. Until now.

(SAP is used here purely as an example of KPI usage. The author does not have any business or personal connection to SAP or Becher.)

Becher's team was built to make it possible for individual consumers to easily take advantage of SAP software and education. The delivery vehicle is online sales and consumption and, increasingly, in-application purchase or upgrade.

Managing to OutcomeTo guide the new online business, Becher is careful to separate compensating his team for outputs from compensating for outcomes. "I want the KPI measured on the outcomes," he says. "I want to reward people for [getting to] the destination, not the hard work that got us there."

Many organizations are dominated by financial metrics and by a focus on inputs and outputs. It is certainly a more accurate reflection of the individual contribution. In sales, you often compensate a representative on the revenue that he or she delivers in a territory. You find that same pattern in finance, engineering, and marketing contributors. It makes sense to observe outputs, but when you reward for them, you get a focus on these instead of outcomes. The individuals might succeed at the expense of the business.

Contributors often expect to be rewarded for activities. They can point to themselves as being a success whether or not the overall organization does well. It is easy to maximize effort to make the activity look great: the measurements help the contributor stand out, even when they don't actually support the outcome.

For example, a salesperson can book a sale that cannot be installed. He will have delivered the output as defined by his compensation plan, but that does not lead to the desired outcome: revenue. In general, you will get the outcomes that you reward. Becher calls these measurements "egometrics" when they measure and reward output instead of outcome. A better strategy is to reward for the desired outcomeâ€”in this case booking the revenue.

Growing a business requires drawing a line between what you measure and what you reward. Becher makes it clear to his team that he wants to know what they're doing. "I track them all," he explains. "I want to know how well the engine room is running. But my main focus is on outcomes and that is what I measure every day." However he is also clear that the key indicators for his business are the outcomes, not the activities.

But in order to reward the outputs that lead to key outcomes, you must first define the outcomes before you define the measurement system. This means you must make a commitment as to what is important in the future. If this is something that will be managed day by day. You'll want to heed the guideline to limit outcomes to no more than five KPIs.

Outputs will change often as your business changes. Your stated and desired outcomes should not. Invest the time to choose the right outcomes early, and then work to stick with them.

Choosing the right KPIs is choosing how your business and your people will grow. You can fall into this accidentally, or you can take the time up front to decide what kind of growth you want and then select the right outcomes to measure. Systematic growth comes from choosing to guide that growth from the very beginning. That is aided when you focus on five or fewer outcomes and hold to them.

Five is not a magic number. Some executives have limited their KPIs to three. It's an individual choice. Choose your limit based on what you think a manager or individual contributor will keep in mind during a very busy day. Asking him or her to focus on more than that is likely to fail. The busier your team is, the less capacity they have for more measurements to remember. The best practice is to keep the number small.

SAP Digital's Five KPIsWhat exactly does Becher measure? His five key outcomes define his business future, and here is how he describes them.

1 - "When we started out, the single most important KPI was percentage of orders that did straight-through processing. This means that an order was placed and went all the way through our process without exception or failure."

2 - "Second is the percentage of orders that go from purchase to productive within" the targeted time frame.

"For example, we have a product for individual sales reps and small teams. Since it's designed to be used without any help by IT, we have a target of going from purchase to productive use in under 30 minutes."

It is easy to measure the product downloads every day. What matters more is whether the user can make it work. The number of downloads is an output to observe. Becher's KPI is "purchase to productive."

3 -"Third is the percentage of trials that convert to paid orders. This is the current proxy for customer satisfaction."

Free trials are common in the software business. However, if a product does well in trial but does not convert to paid order, then the activity is not leading to the outcome Becher wants. An activity that does not lead to the correct outcome shows that there is a problem. If you were on Becher's team you'd want to know that.

4 - "Fourth is the percentage of orders that move from a 'teaser' (trial) period to a longer agreement. It is quite common in the digital business for someone to access a free version of a product for a promotional period but never to convert to a paying customer. We are intentionally focusing on this rate of adoption."

Looking at rate of transition from free to paid is a single indicator that replaces a number of "egometrics." The percentage is an easily measurable outcome that really matters to SAP.

5 - "Our ultimate measure of success is the percentage of people who grow their relationship. This could be buying (product for) more users, renewing their agreement for longer time periods, or unlocking more features and content."

For Becher, this outcome is about growing a connection. Downloads are important outputs to note, but growing customer relationships is the desired outcome.

The Outcomes You Choose Can Accelerate Your GrowthChoosing and measuring outcomes that matterâ€”and limiting their number to only a very fewâ€”are the two techniques you should use to define where and how the business will grow. It may not be rocket science, but it's essential nonetheless. Choosing the right outcomes can be key to building your best strategy.

If you ask each team member to focus on just his or her own output, you may get operational excellence at the expense of business growth. This can happen if, for instance, the sales team books deals that cannot flow to revenue. The sales team looks good and gets rewarded. Your business suffers.

If you ask the entire team to focus on five or fewer outcomes that really matter, you increase your chances of being able to keep everyone on the same path. This accelerates your growth.

But focusing on outcomes does even more. By choosing today which outcomes you want to measure, you refine what matters to you and the people you depend on. That focus today will define what outcomes you produce tomorrow as well. The result can be growth that is both more predictable and targeted. It is investing your time now to get the right outcomes later.

This article was originally published in B>Quest (Business Quest) Courtesy of the Richards College of Business University of West Georgia. This article copr. 2015 by Peter Meyer and the Richards College of Business, all rights reserved

You're here because you are looking for ways to help your business grow. Making that happen, even when it's difficult, is what this story is about.

Let's start with the problem. When Paula took a new management assignment at IBM, she found she had an employee who hadn't been performing for a long time. The direct manager, Bethanne, had been told not to take action because "We are all family. We help the weak ones."

You've seen it before. It seemed as though a manager was choosing to be liked instead of making a hard decision. When you want your people to grow, this is a terrible example to set; it festers in the organization. Paula wanted growth instead. Which of us would not? This posting is about her plan to move from disease to healthy growth. It is a great example.

This solution for growth comes from: — A key starting point — Engaging with people but not doing the work — Giving grace

1. The Starting Point You probably know at least one manager who was effectively fired by her own people. It's what happens when the employees stop respecting their manager. One of the fastest ways to engender resentment is to try to please everyone. As leaders, we sometimes define ourselves by how others see us. However, if you look at the successful managers and executives throughout these postings, you'll see individuals who define themselves from their core and their values. The executives who promote sustainable growth are the ones who define themselves from what they know is right. They don't define themselves from an external standard.

These leaders start with their own sense of what is right, and they hold tightly to that internal key. They look at their core values and what they stand for. That drives their decisions. Often, not always, it drives the social norm in that business. It is always key to successful growth. Paula was strong enough and aware enough to start from what she knew in her core was the right way to act and not react.

2. Engaging The choice to shelter employees has never felt right for Paula. It hurts the business and it hurts the employees. Sheltering is usually a reaction based on fear, and you stifle growth when you let fear guide your choices. We and our businesses don't grow from fear; we grow from stretching to fulfill our potential. We don't grow from protecting; we grow from expanding our current abilities.

We grow when we act, not react.

When you choose to help your team members while making your targets, you may feel your role changing. You will actively:

Structure meaningful problems for them to solve Engage with them as they solve these themselves Get the heck out of the way as they own the issue and learn

Growth happens when you are there, engaged, and managing the growth and not the activity.

Engaging with employees is not protecting them. Engaging is choosing the challenge they will face and then choosing to guide the learning and growth. It is acting to stay very involved the whole way but not doing the work for the team.

Paula wanted to give this employee a full chance to make things work. Bethanne "â€¦did that, but after another 90 days we just knew that he could not do the work." Instead of protecting Bethanne and the team member, Paula decided on two strategies. The first was to make the change easier for Bethanne to address herself. The other was to structure this to become a learning experience for Bethanne.

"Having to deal with the bureaucracy and political burden of having to move somebody out of the businessâ€”that was not new. Firing someone in a Fortune 100 company where poor performers do not get moved out of the businessâ€”that was the hard work."

Paula chose to get and stay engaged on this but clearly not to do the work for Bethanne. She could have done the task, and done it faster, but instead she asked Bethanne to take each step while Paula stayed involved.

"Bethanne had to take reach out and then use a director-level Human Resources executive. From the HR advisor she got the technical information such as â€˜this the process, these are the steps, this is the level of detail you will need to provide." Paula could have supplied that but Paula chose a different role: "From me she got the encouragement. I told her that this is the right thing to do. I provided the grace to do this."

3. Giving Grace to Get Growth What does Paula mean by "providing grace?" This is how she explains it: "I recognized that this was going to be a demanding activity for Bethanne. It had to be executed excellently"â€”and with real sensitivity. For Bethanne to do this and to have "room" to grow, Bethanne needed more space from her everyday urgencies. That is the "grace" that Paula wanted to give.

Instead of saying something like "This is your job, and so is all the rest, get it all done" Paula looked at the best way to help Bethanne do this right. "There were some assignments that I would have had go to her. I didn't." Bethanne knew that Paula was involved, and was investing in her but never doing the work for her. Bethanne felt supported but also knew that she had the responsibility to get this issue right.

Paula made the decision to put Bethanne's development first. She gave Bethanne fewer urgencies while holding Bethanne to the challenge. Bethanne acted in the way that Paula hoped. "She responded to that by doing a complete job."

It feels like a luxury to give Bethanne time to think this all through, to work out the details. That meant a conscious decision to reduce her workload in an environment where workloads were increasing. That decision happened because Bethanne's development "â€¦became a more important priority."

There is self-interest here. "It is important to me as her managerâ€¦she becomes more valuable to me. It is important to Bethanne because important skills are expanded, it is important to the corporation because they have one more skilled manager." No matter whether your team is small or large, having a skilled manager is going to be an advantage. You don't make or forge this skill; you grow it. You owe it first to yourself and then to your business and team to grow good managers. "Giving grace" is part of nourishing growth and growing your business.

Fostering Growth Bethanne had a much better chance of success if she could have the grace and time to do this well. Paula's task, as she assigned it to herself, was to grow the time and offer the grace for Bethanne.

Did Paula challenge Bethanne? The answer is yes, giving grace includes giving a challenge to stretch to grow.

Engaging and giving grace are about being very present, but not doing their work. It is about knowing how to provide grace for the right priorities. And then doing so.

The truth is that when we work from our core, not from input of those around us, we will find that we can select the right priorities. Do you make growing people one of those important contributions to your business? Paula made that choice here. "Investing in her was the right thing to do. She was a good manager on the verge of becoming a great manager. What more important managerial job do I have? That is the top of the game for me."

Grace starts with working from your internal strength and values. The bad news is that you can't rely on anyone else to get it. The good news is that you don't need to rely on anyone else, and your team members don't need to rely on you. You can let them supply their own strength if you can give them the grace, sense of values, and engagement to do so. Grace is a gift that you can always give at the right time. To give someone room to grow when it really matters, to listen, to support without interfering or judging, is to do immense good for your business.

The principle is much as we said earlier: Progress is a changeless law. Individuals grow and you can't control that. But you can support it, assist it, and gain by it. Holding to your core value, engaging with your team, and giving grace for growth and action is a way to turn a problem into growth for your organization.

Do you want to create and dominate a new market? Are there still opportunities for you to do that? The good news is that as long as there are problems, you have an opportunity to create a new market. For an example let's look at a well established and even boring market that engendered a new high revenue business.

New markets are not reserved for emerging niches like the internet of things or cell phone handsets. They're available to businesses that have little romance. They can be started wherever there are important problems that customers really feel.

The successful new markets start with problems, not with solutions. The example? What might seem a prosaic business — selling transistors — and how a former purchasing specialist built a whole new market. His name is Mike Wood, and he started with a problem.

First: The ProblemTransistors and other semiconductor components are unexciting but they sell well. Most of them are very application specific. At any one time there are perhaps 100 million different semiconductors being manufactured. This generates around $300B (U.S.) in revenue.

"Once (an expensive manufacturing) facility gets up to capacity, the owners are wary of investing another $2 Billion to build another facility." This is Mike describing the dynamic. Most chip companies manage fluctuating demand by juggling lead times as orders come in.

Since the individual products are highly specialized and the fabrication facilities are expensive to build and run, manufacturers often juggle several customers at once. That juggling is hard on customers. Sometimes very hard.

The result is that some customers get the wrong kind of surprise — their expected delivery dates change dramatically. Mike's team will get a call saying: "I always buy it from (the same supplier) and they always deliver it 8 weeks after order. (Today) I call 'and say: 'here I am again, and I need 100,000 of these transistors in 8 weeks.' (The supplier) says: one 'small problem, this time the delivery is 20 weeks.'"

Suddenly adding 12 weeks to an order cycle is a big deal. It leaves the customer in trouble because these products are so specific that it is hard for other manufacturers to fill in. It's potentially a disaster for their customer.

For a company that makes something as simple as a toaster, delaying production is not an option. The appliance company cannot assume that Best Buy and Wal-Mart will cheerfully wait an additional three months while a transistor delivery problem gets sorted out. The retailers will order from someone else for this and probably future quarters. For most toaster companies, this is unacceptable.

This supply issue happens every day. Transistor manufacturers can't build room in their schedule for sudden requirements. Most distributors cannot afford to stock enough transistors to fill an unexpected spike. When this happens the toaster company cannot replace the components with something else. Then urgent calls go out to transistor suppliers: "Does anyone have access to the product I need in less than 20 weeks?" The answer is usually: 'No.'

If that wasn't complex enough, the trend to outsource manufacturing has added a second problem. The toaster has a brand name on the front, but that toaster may be made by a contract manufacturer. The contract manufacturer buys transistors and other components for dozens or hundreds of different products on their lines. To manage that business, the manufacturer keeps an inventory based on forecasts from the appliance company and many others. The contract manufacturer does not keep excess parts around.

You know how this falls apart. Sales frequently varies from forecast. The companies involved wind up with excess inventory that pools in unpredictable places around the world. These gaps or excesses are very challenging.

There are now two problems: — 1 - A gap in inventory on one side and — 2 - An excess in components sitting around somewhere else. The stakes are high. Missing a delivery of kitchen appliances to Wal-Mart or Best Buy can be fatal to the supplier.

Ideally, this should never happen. We have predictive computer modeling and collect a lot of data. However, the world is dynamic. When someone in a small country in Europe makes a series of bad loans, consumer product sales across all of Europe might be dramatically lower. The threat of a terrorist attack may mean that communication product sales are no longer predictable in a major city. When a dry summer combines with lightning strikes a part of the California economy might change for months.

Any of those scenarios can disrupt a company that buys components month to month. Too few or too many of even an inexpensive chip is unacceptable.

In other words, the problem is real. To the consumer who buys the toaster, it may only be an inconvenience. For the companies involved, it can be fatal.

The solution seems obvious on the surface — use brokers who buy from companies with excess inventory and sell to companies with sudden need. This doesn't work. Person-to-person selling can't scale up to match the need. No one company can afford to buy a large chunk of the worldwide excess inventory on a speculative basis and post it on their web site.

Mike had been buying semiconductors for Siemens. He knew the imbalance problem and how serious companies found it to be. What Mike wanted to do was to build a solution that would actually solve the problem.

Next: Crafting The Solution When Mike left Siemens he took a role working for what is now HPI AG, a speculative broker in Germany that buys and sells excess electronic components. As good as that company is, no speculative broker can handle enough volume to solve this problem. So he started to build a solution that would provide a way to directly connect the contract manufacturer with excess inventory to the toaster manufacturer with a sudden and urgent need.

As he did this, Mike was building an online chip exchange that would clearly compete with his employer's main business. Each transaction on the exchange might take revenue away from the parent company. Even with the obvious risk, HPI supported Mike. He developed a web site that would allow the owners of excess chips to connect to the companies with sudden needs. He named the new company Virtual Chip Exchange or VCE. It worked, and it worked in a big way.

It worked because the problem mattered. Mike had a solution, one that changed the game for the semiconductor industry. The VCE model works on a larger scale than any broker or distributor can support. VCE makes it much easier to solve supply and demand issues. Mike says that: "We have $2 Billion worth of excess inventory to sell on our site. The largest (stocking) distributors might have up to $1 Billion worth of inventory. The total available-to-sell inventory at (the largest worldwide distributor) is actually lower than the total available inventory at Virtual Chip." In other words, VCE has become an industry giant by solving a problem that customers feel intensely.

Summary: Start with the ProblemThe problem? A series of expensive and time-critical mismatches between the supply and demand of transistor style chips. This means that products are not delivered when promised.

The solution? A new market where Mike and his team can dominate by solving a real problem.

The result? A new market where none existed before, a large company of which Mike is the CEO, solutions for sellers and customers, and profit for Virtual Chip Exchange's owners.

The lesson? Even in prosaic industries, new markets can be created with easily built technologies, and they can become dominant and profitable in a matter of months. They do it by finding a problem, sexy or not, that people will pay to solve. Because the problem is important to the customers, revenues can immediately grow and the solution can be profitable.

Can you create and then dominate a brand new market? Yes. You do it by starting with an old but important problem.

The economy still seems challenging. If you own or manage a business that sells to other organizations, you have a choice.

- Do you opt to hunker down and ride out the difficulties?

- Or do you find ways to get proactive and create opportunities?

More than ever, our ability to know what to do is clouded. The lessons we so painfully gained in the past lessons don't seem quite as relevant. Yet, commerce is clearly still happening. People are still buying.

This is two blog articles. In the first, published this week, youâ€™ll find suggestions about whether to hunker down or to seek opportunities and take advantage of them despite the current disruption in the economy.

In the second, to be published soon, youâ€™ll find strategies to take quick advantage of disruption. You can make disruption your ally.

Hunker or Grow?As a manager do you hunker down and ride out the current economic difficulties? Or do you choose to get proactive and find and make use of new opportunities?

Many managers are acting in shock. They are not taking the initiative because they cannot predict the immediate future. Your ability to know what to do based on past lessons is challenged. Doing nothing feels safe, acting feels risky.

With all that, it is easy to forget that commerce is still happening. Companies are looking to take steps to make as well as save money. Governments are continuing to invest in services. It is easy to forget that things are still being sold and that customers want to buy more of them.

If you own or manage a business, you have a choice. One option is to bide your time during the disruption. You can wait for the revenue to appear. Many managers will choose this.

Another option is to move into unknown areas to create revenue projects. The unknown is not the easy choice for many, but some will choose to try to create opportunity. The good news for the latter managers is that this disruption is creating opportunities that never existed before. This is a time when new products and services can take hold.

You face risks when you move into the unknown. Many projects you propose to customers may fail. However, if only a quarter of the new projects happen, that is a major opportunity that other companies may miss. You have an opportunity that your business will miss if you wait out the recession.

When you talk to your sales teams, remind them that there is a continuous river of spending. Although the rate of flow rises and falls, the river never stops. The economy changes and takes odd turns, but the river of spending never dries up.

Some times you stand on the side of the river of revenue opportunity. You point at it and discuss how much larger it was last spring. You watch it and wonder what next spring will bring. Perhaps you walk along, looking for the right place in which to dip a toe. Sometimes you step into the river of revenue and get thoroughly immersed in it. Right now that might be appealing.

Getting the Sales Team Into a Revenue Stream For your sales team to take advantage of the stream may require that they take a different view. You may want them to look at customers a bit differently. Consider:

- There are businesses to which you sell that are withdrawing and hiding and hunkering down, hoping to survive. They provide trickles of revenue.

- There are also customers who are looking to thrive and grow their own revenue. These businesses are part of a fuller and fast stream.

The key here is that your sales team may not realize that these trickle and fast stream customers are often people who work in the same company. In many businesses, managers hoping to survive are in staff roles like human resources (HR) and information technology (IT.) The ones planning to thrive and grow are in line positions on the revenue side of the same business. It is time to ask:

- Do your sales teams call on the staff or the line?

If not both, they may be missing the stream of revenue.

You can take real advantage of this in a competitive marketplace. This is because some of your competitors are in survival mode; so they appeal to the hunker-down folks in staff roles. This works to your advantage when you work both the staff and the line in your sales strategies.

Fewer of your rivals are stepping into proactive mode. They differentiate themselves by talking about revenue. They appeal to the managers and executives who want to grow their businesses. They are in the faster stream; you may want to join them in that stream. As late as it is in the calendar year, their are still new deals to be had in this stream.

Your fastest path to the quickly growing your revenue stream this year is going to be found with the line managers of customer companies, people who also need revenue this year. Every company has managers who want to find ways to get things done and are willing to break budgets to make revenue happen. At this time of year, they are more frustrated and more willing to work with a new supplier. That is an opportunity for you.

Approaching Your New Customer â€“ Three Practical Considerations The economy isnâ€™t an object to which you are prey. The economy is an average, a line defined by mathematics. There are companies and people below that line, and companies and people above it. No one of us is average; each has a choice to be above or below that line. You control that choice.

Customers arenâ€™t monolithic. Each company or municipality is a combination of buyers and decision makers with different agendas. This is a good time for your sales team to take advantage of the difference between those taking the survive path versus those looking to thrive.

For example, you might rely on the news to say that Cisco Systems is gathering cash to retire debt and buy businesses at a discount. You could say that General Motors (GM) is unable to spend money, a poor place for you to invest sales time this year.

But these generalizations hide important truths. Cisco is cutting back at the same time the company is investing in growth. Their non-revenue departments are looking to avoid spending. At the same time, GM is spending substantially in tools, consulting, and, of course, new technologies for cars.

Even saving money is expensive. Closing plants requires a substantial investment. GM will do it. On the revenue side, GM is building the cars of the future. That requires a substantial investment and creates a revenue stream. At GM, you will find top managers focused on revenue. There is a stream there for someone to tap.

To gain an advantage for your business, you need to ask your sales team a question:

- Do you call on cost control departments or revenue generating departments?

For most, it is cost departments. There is nothing wrong with doing that and building long-term relationships, but this may not grow your business this year. Your goal is long-term profitability, but can you also have the short term? Can you increase your market share today while your competitors hunker down? You can.

Start by designing sales strategies that bring value to the revenue oriented groups at your prospective business customers. That means adding value as the customer sees it, not as you want him or her to see it. Letting the customer define value can be uncomfortable. So is reaching high into executive offices that are not familiar to your sales team. On the other hand, if there was ever a time to get uncomfortable, it is now. This is a high leverage period because other companies are withdrawing from competition.

The good news about this being a blog is that if you want help you need only send over a note. Iâ€™m an author, I love it when you read what I write and ask questions. Drop me a note at Peter @ MeyerGrp.com

A practical step to locating your revenue stream is to segment each customer company into individual buyers, focusing on whether the individuals directly contribute revenue. Some of those buyers are on the cost side of the company. Some are on the revenue side. Donâ€™t let your sales teams miss either side.

It is not just companies that have revenue-generating departments. So do governments, medical centers, and nonprofits. Governments have tax collection and economic development groups. They are quickly creating revenue streams this year. Have you allocated some of your sales resources in that stream?

The second practical answer? Make it easier than ever for the revenue managers at your new customer to make a decision to go ahead.

Ask: - Can you make it easier to for your customers to buy in small bites?

- Can you make it lucrative for your sales teams to sell small deals to new customers?

- Can you help your new customer ease into the relationship with you?

- Are you compensating your sales people to prospect for this kind of business?

- Can you offer bonuses for new customers? Even if located within in companies you sell to?

As the economy rebounds and a customer grows, to whom will the revenue managers turn? It will be companies and people that focused on selling small and easy to absorb projects during the recession. Why not make your company the preferred source?

If your team is not used to talking to customersâ€™ revenue generators, the third practical step to take is to take a leadership position. Show them by doing it. That requires time and attention, but it is likely to be the best investment you can make this year.

ConclusionAs you guide your business, you have the option to hunker down and let things get better. Or you can take advantage of the opportunity to get a larger market share and add new customers. The best way to focus your sales teams on obtaining new revenue is to recognize that potential new customers include individuals inside businesses. Point your teams toward managers who generate revenue for your prospect.

One of the key investments is your own energy. If you want your team to be proactive with customers, you will need to act that way. If you combine your leadership with the right product and service packaging, you are likely to get revenue for your company that others will miss. As Intelâ€™s spokesman said when announcing the $7 billion building plan: "You never save your way out of recession. You invest your way." Will you invest in a revenue stream? Will you make it work for you?

This posting is from the upcoming book: Grow Your Revenue, Time, and People. It has appeared in a slightly different form in BusinessQuest, the journal for the Richards School of Business.

When you consider how to increase your revenue, start with your own buying preferences. Why might you choose to pay a premium for a product? Does that apply to others as well? Specifically, consider three questions:

1 - Would you pay more if you got a guarantee of satisfaction? 2 - Does guaranteeing your work say something about you? 3 - What is a guarantee's total cost compared to the revenue?

The first two of these questions are tightly interrelated. When I buy on line or in person, I tend to shop where returns are easy. Lands End and Boure Bicycle Clothing are great examples. Each company flatly guarantees that I can return purchases or gifts with no questions asked. Does this mean that their clothes or bags are automatically better? No, but their service is. Their guarantee makes my purchase safer. The guarantee is a statement of their values. I bring my business back to them because of that. For me, questions 1 and 2 are important reasons to choose my supplier.

You can use this to substantially boost your margins. Customers come to you with questions to resolve. Answering those questions in a way that makes you the safe choice can increase your sales price and reduce your risk at the same time.

Consider what you already do to differentiate your product. If you sell tires or roofing materials, do you want to just sell prepared chemicals? Or do you want to deliver safety on the road and in the building? Is your product a combination of ingredients that anyone can buy, or is your product the way that you deliver those materials to individual customers?

To command a higher price, make the offering you deliver a mixture of two things. First, start with your ability to get the problem and success criteria defined up front. When you do this with your customer before he or she buys, your customer is more likely to get the solution that they tell you they want.

That allows you to deliver the second part of the mix comfort. A guarantee is part of that sense of comfort. Combining your understanding with comfort for the customer will lead to increased margins. Negotiating success criteria in advance shows your customer that you value their uniqueness. It also allows you to know exactly what you should guarantee.

Increasing Margins by Doubling Your Price Start by looking at what you value. Would you pay a premium to get a satisfaction guarantee for something important to you? How true is it for others? We asked over 100 executives if they would pay a premium for a guarantee, and how much. They said â€˜yes.' The average increment that they were willing to pay was 100 percent. Not only would they pay more for the safety of a guarantee, they would pay twice as much. It's a strong statement. A guarantee is an expression of your values. That value is attractive. It is also a commitment to protecting the customer. That's also attractive! Those mean higher value to your customer. With that value, you can and should collect additional margin from every customer. It is worth it to you to be worth it to them.

The Satisfaction of Delivering Satisfaction Increasing revenue is only part of the reason to offer a guarantee. Because you are going to do the work right, you get the privilege of your own satisfaction. Do you feel good about delivering quality and value in your business and personal life? One of the main reasons to deliver satisfaction is that this is how you want to perceive yourself. When you are working to your own greatest satisfaction, you are working from your internal compass, from what you are as essence. It feels good.

Satisfaction with your business starts within you. Your sense of quality comes from within you, not from an external source. You may measure the level of quality by comparisons, but your ability to recognize that you deliver quality comes from inside you.

When you deliver from there, it's clearly part of your product. You do what you would feel proud to do, and that shows. You want it to show, and you probably show it now.

To put this in perspective, consider:

If a customer is unhappy with what you have done, would you turn your back? Or: Would you work to craft a solution?

The answer seems obvious. Consider the statement you are making. â€œYesâ€ to that question is a statement that you deliver quality work, end of story. You want to do that, and you want to be known for that. You are working from your internal guidance, from your sense of what you want to be and how you want to see yourself.

That commitment to â€œYesâ€ is a key part of why your customer should buy from you. It is as much a part of your product as tires or roofing materials or billable hours.

Your guarantee that you will take care of the customer, that you are offering to guarantee their satisfaction, is the clear statement from within you to them. One of the best reasons to offer that statement is because you are telling them about what you and they both mean to you.

When you act from what you are, you will make an effort to find ways to make your customer happy. You'll get satisfaction from delivering satisfaction. You are going to do what is right.

Your customers value your focus on the problem as much as they value the hardware or software. When you focus on their problem, you are going to do what is right for them. If you give them that focus, and show you mean it, you will double your margins and more.

If you are going to do what is right, why not tell your customers that this is how you operate? Why not collect the additional margin that they will pay for that commitment to their satisfaction?

Reducing Your Risks Can we afford this level of guarantee? It's a discussion of revenue versus cost. The revenue can be forecast, but the risk can seem enormous and incalculable. When you offer a satisfaction guarantee you run the risk of a customer telling you that you have failed, and then having to make it right. It raises questions.

The first question should be: Do you want to know when you have failed in the customer's eyes? For most of us, the answer is â€˜Yes.'

The second question would be: - Are you going to fix the problem anyway? My guess is that when you look within yourself, you will find that you want to do what is right for the customer if you can. â€˜Yes,' you'll find a way to make it right.

If so, why not ask to be paid for your commitment to excellence in every transaction? In several decades of consulting projects in our firm, we have gotten very good at asking for definitions of success criteria from large companies and small ones.

We've always been good at meeting our commitments. We deliver good work, and we guarantee it. How often do we have to pay out? In the 20 plus years, we've refunded money one time. Just as important, we have increased our sense of doing what is right for each customer.

You can manage your risk by ensuring success. The biggest tool to ensure customer success is how you communicate with the customer before the project is started. Success Criteria are your tool for margin, delivering value, and reducing risk.

Together you and your customer have the opportunity to define success for a project. If you want to make sure that you will both feel satisfied that you delivered satisfaction, make an opportunity to define success before you start.

Before you do price negotiations, ask for an understanding that you will be successful if X and Y are done, and that you have the ability to negotiate changes if both parties agree. It sounds pretty obvious, but how many projects do you start without a clear and common agreement on how you will know that you have finished? Success Criteria help you and they help your customer.

Once you agree on that definition, you know your targets to deliver satisfaction for you and the customer. You know what you can and will do to satisfy your own internal drive for quality. You know your capability to satisfy your commitments to the customer. And you know that you can ask a premium because you asked for the Success Criteria and then promised to meet them.

In other words, your risk goes down. Your margins go up.

The essence of the risk changes as well. Before you were concerned with issuing a refund. Now you are more concerned with making things right. Again, wouldn't you do that with or without a written guarantee? Isn't that what you stand for? If so, what is the risk of the guarantee? There is very little risk and a lot to gain.

Over the years we have clearly gotten revenue that might not have come to us. Why? We display the commitment to satisfaction. I know this because customers have told us.

What risk would be unacceptable to me as an owner? The risk that I would say no to supporting a paying customer, or the risk that I would not work to understand a customer's needs in advance. Working from my core, my internal compass, I won't accept the risk. I want to treat my client in a way that I enjoy being treated.

The biggest risk for me? Going home thinking that I did not do the right thing for the customer or myself. Since I won't accept that risk, this is the argument that keeps me offering a satisfaction guarantee. The additional revenue is the happy side effect.

Choosing to Guarantee The arguments to offer a guarantee are:

- Increasing revenue to more than cover what you will pay in claims

- Keeping the focus of a transaction on the work that you are doing instead of the price of doing it

- Presenting the same sense of quality that you strive to be

- You are going to fix things that go wrong anyway. It is one of your strengths.

You might as well get paid for one of your best qualities. Peter Drucker put it well when he said: â€œThe single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its four walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.â€

A significant part of your product is your value, and the core of your value is what comes from within you, not from what you produce. That is good news; you can produce more value by focusing on that, and by generating more from your source. The benefits to you, your customers, and your business are great. You just have to figure out how to do it.

Remember that a guarantee is a contract with your customer, and both parties are involved. So start with asking to jointly define success before any important transaction that you will guarantee.

Do you want your customer to feel comfortable buying from your business? Do you want clients to respect how you do business? If the answer is yes, then guarantees can be a low cost way to help customers buy.

In the end, your guarantee of customer satisfaction is not about the hardware or software or service. It is about the statement that you are making to your customer and to yourself. The benefits include higher revenue, but the chief benefit may be how you and your customer see your value, and your values.

(This posting is based on the book: Growing Your Revenue, People, and Time which I am still writing. It has appeared in a similar form in the Business Quest, the journal of the Richards College of Business. If you have comments or suggestions, please let me know!)